


Lay Me Down

by booleanWildcard



Series: Thus Always To Tyrants [1]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Arthur Morgan in love does foolish things, Arthur morgan speaks most eloquently through cuddles, Banned Together Bingo 2020, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Charles ain't lyin to anyone, Charles buried Arthur and that's gonna leave marks, Charles needs a hug, Complicated Platonic Relationships, Cowboys in Love, Don't worry the death is temporary, Dutch's boys - Freeform, Found Family, Grief, Heavy - Freeform, I probably don't have to tag that, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Mourning, Mutual Pining, Nonlinear Narrative, PTSD, Past Child Abuse, Pining, Sort Of, Taima knows what's up, Taima's the only one who knows what's up, Talking Animals, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Trans Charles Smith, Trans Male Character, Trauma, Trust the horse y'all, Unexplained Elements, Unexplained Magic, brief/temporary arthur/trelawny, but not as slow of as my other stuff, canonically racist sexist homophobic and transphobic world, complex antagonist, cowboys and outlaws!, cowboys in lust, dead dove do not eat, dissociative fugue, drunk necking, drunk riding, especially not himself, fragmentary memory, friendships with the gang, hangovers, historically racist sexist homophobic and transphobic world, long AN, magic animals, mentions genocide, mentions of unpleasant childhoods, past Dutch/Hosea, some tense shifting in future that will indicate memories or things back in time, somewhat canonical drunken shenanigans, spirits and magical entities, spoilers for the game, the characters aren't aware of everything, there will be some arthur/trelawney early on, this charles does not like dutch, transmasc character, transmasculine Charles Smith, unbeta'ed we die like men, use of the word "necking" to describe kissing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:20:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24321940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booleanWildcard/pseuds/booleanWildcard
Summary: "There had been a lot left unspoken between them that day, loud for all the silence, and these promises that Charles made to himself were among them-- but there had also been a fatalistic look in Arthur's eyes, already so heavy with grief and exhaustion and guilt, that betrayed Arthur's own lack of faith in the possibility."Please note both the tags and the "chose not to use archive warnings" tag, which is itself a warning.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Charles Smith
Series: Thus Always To Tyrants [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1755877
Comments: 16
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There's gonna be some stuff in this fic that I have no intention of explaining, and that includes most of the supernatural elements and the queer elements. The rest of this note will likely be TL;DR, but the short reason is thus: Human experience-- including things like gender-- is weird and wild and _not math_ , and it is under no compunction to be logical, or even quantifiable, so I'm gonna lean into that.
> 
> Charles, in this fic, is going to be transmasculine. My current *intention* is to be deliberately vague about some elements of his body, because there is no singular trans body. I intend to take this tactic even if the fic becomes sexually explicit later on. I reserve the right to change my mind, tho, in which case I will give specific warnings in the top note WRT what language I'm using. I also want to make a few things clear:
> 
> \- back when I started in fandom, many many years ago, it was hard to find any spaces that allowed queer characters, what was possible was very very limited, and people would literally give you quotas wrt “realistic populations” of queer characters. I called that bullshit then and I call it bullshit now. I could write queer-- and specifically transmasc and nonbinary-- characters every moment of the rest of my life, and it would still be but a grain of sand in the representative abyss. I very much write in that spirit. Similarly, there is no right way to be any kind of trans and/or nonbinary (and/or queer and/or LGBT+)-- what I write/what Charles experiences is only one way, and it is not definitive.
> 
> \- Given that I am writing in that spirit, I am going to be writing anachronistically. This is a work of fantasy, not a history paper. Specifically, I intend to be writing the queerness in ways that represent experiences that I can recognize, which involves using language and ideas and nuances to gender and queerness and embodiment and a bunch of other things that didn't exist _in quite this way_ at the turn of the century.
> 
> \- THAT SAID, I want to be **very clear** that this anachronism is NOT because there wasn't plenty of historical queerness to be found during this era. In all of my research, academic or otherwise, I have yet find a period of human history where people's experiences, especially the gendered/sexual/romantic ones, were not Fucking Complicated. The question of terminology is A Thing and i ain't got enough words in this AN to go into it, HOWEVER- the American West was full of gender variance and queerness, which absolutely did interact with all the other innumerable and protean social elements of the era, and you can find some really neat books out of academic presses on the subject if you're interested.
> 
> WRT this fic specifically:
> 
> \- this is a project i've been sitting on for awhile; I intended to fold it into my participation in Banned Together Bingo 2020. As such, the parts of it relevant to that event need to be Complete by December, which is going to move it up a little higher in the priority list than it otherwise might've been. I still intend to maintain no posting schedule, though I do intend to write this in arcs that will be posted as separate works within a larger series.
> 
> \- I write for my own edification (and/or hedonism), and what floats my stoat may not be the same for you. If you don't like something I've done, don't agree with an interpretation or a characterization, or anything of that nature, I sincerely and emphatically encourage you to write your own version of it. That way we all get more stories to read.
> 
> \- **Maintain no expectations,** and you will not be disappointed. This goes for everything from the presence and regularity sexual content-- if that even becomes relevant-- to basic things like legibility. I have some weird aesthetic priorities and I don't always (/usually) disclose them.
> 
> \- I own nothing, and i claim to own nothing. (related: if any of these ideas are appealing to you, feel free to run with them; they were never mine to begin with)
> 
> \- I am very grateful to creators of transformative works broadly, and fanfic writers in specific: I follow in the footsteps of giants.
> 
> \- specific content warnings for chapters will be in the end note, tho will be mentioned in the top note if present.
> 
> \- I know i'm already TL;DR but there's a final note about canon at the end. TY for your patience. and TY for reading.

Charles has never really considered himself to be a particularly spiritual man.

This makes him slightly unusual among outlaws, who tend to be both relentlessly pragmatic and deeply faithful, if the latter admittedly more towards luck than any conventional god. But Charles has been on his own for a very long time, has seen more people betrayed by surety in their beliefs than he can count, and so he tends not to put much stock in things that feel too much like superstition.

Charles had also, until very recently, considered sending Arthur away to be one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do in his life, that day on the reservation when Arthur had said those words that Charles had been waiting for so _so_ long to hear -- "I'll stay here, with you." (away from Dutch, leader and surrogate father, local king to a family for which Arthur was the ever faithful prince) "To help.". It had been the _right_ thing to do, sending Arthur back to camp, and they both knew it-- Arthur _did_ have people whose survival depended on his presence, and now more than ever, given the homeric tragedy of Dutch's fall from grace. _That_ was where Arthur was needed, not here, no matter how authentic and virtuous his intentions. After what Dutch had done to to the Wapiti, what Dutch had _cost_ them-- the pledge of one prince's fealty in the place of the life of their own king's son wasn't the solution the Wapiti needed now. Charles would help them flee north, to Canada, away from the rapacious hunger of America and its army-- and it had to be Charles alone, without Arthur.

It didn't have to be permanent, Charles had told himself. They'd see each other again. Arthur was dying-- a thought on which Charles tried very hard not to linger-- but they still had time. Charles would come back for him. Charles was always going to come back for him.

There had been a lot left unspoken between them that day, loud for all the silence, and these promises that Charles made to himself were among them-- but there had also been a fatalistic look in Arthur's eyes, already so heavy with grief and exhaustion and guilt, that betrayed Arthur's own lack of faith in the possibility.

*

Charles has never considered himself to be a particularly superstitious man, but the dreams are something different.

Charles normally dreams in memories: often unpleasant, but ultimately uninteresting, easy enough to banish in the cold light morning, carried away on the curling wisps of steam rising from fresh coffee. Rituals are important-- they keep the worst at bay.

He and Wapiti tribe are halfway to safety when that changes-- a band of people raggedly fleeing the snapping jaws of pursuing vengeful soldiers, desperate and grieving and already so deeply familiar with both desperation and grief. They're making better time than Charles anticipated, but that persistent fear-- that which roils heavily in the guts and lingers in the limbs -- is nevertheless their constant companion. So far, they have been _lucky;_ nothing about their flight can go wrong, or else the insatiable hunger of genocidal American Imperialism will have successfully destroyed another people; those twin knowledges feed them, keep them moving grimy forward. None of them has to imagine the price of failure, because they've already seen it rendered on the bodies of their kin, for decades.

But these dreams that Charles starts having-- they're different, _they feel different,_ as if originating from some second locus unspeakable horror, smaller and more personal, something to be borne alone.

Charles sees Arthur die in these dreams: snatches of events that are incomplete but tangible, that feel _real,_ more even than the memories he's used to. After the first of them, the strongest and most immediate of the series, he wakes into a world that feels very different-- fundamentally changed in some small way, as if everything around Charles shifted when he wasn't looking, and now he can no longer rely on some stabilizing truth that he only now recognizes as foundational from its absence. It's just a dream, he tells himself. A product of the chase, of the tenacious, lingering fear. It's not-- it can't be-- real.

But the cold light of morning and meditative wisps of steam do not bear these dreams away; they lay on him, heavy and bleak, and nothing with which he tries to ground himself can quite banish them. They return to him at night, every night, feeling closer to memory in each occurrence, and no more comforting for that distance. Sometimes there are animals-- Arthur as a golden buck, pursued by a dark wolf, and Charles a panther who tries and fails to intercept the wolf-- sometimes the animals are separate, playing out their interstitial drama between the human one featuring Arthur and Micah and Dutch. Always, the ending is the same: the buck falls, the wolf's jaws around its neck; Charles and panther can do nothing but watch; Dutch and Micah leave Arthur behind on a mountain, Arthur gasping painfully for breath after shallower breath, dying slowly and alone.

*

The news reaches the travelers slowly, but it does reach them eventually-- in snatches, rumors first and and then frantic newspapers, confirmed shortly thereafter by Trelawney, of all people, who is likewise fleeing north. Charles wasn't expecting to see the conman again, and certainly not as he slips into a small anonymous town to barter quickly for whatever supplies he can scrounge-- the man is unusually ragged, none of his usual fashionable theatricality wrapped around him like a protective cloak, just tired and grieving and staying away from the law as best he is able like the rest of them. The rumors are true, Trelawney says, and the newspapers barely sensationalized: the Van Der Linde gang has fallen, shattered, dashed against the Pinkerton's inhospitable shore, the survivors scattered to the winds-- what few of them there were. Very few.

Arthur is not among the survivors.

That news-- which Trelawney delivers gently, expression far more knowing and sympathetic than Charles can really parse at that particular moment-- does not strike Charles as hard as he expects it too-- not right away. He feels like he's floating, upon hearing it-- like he's been floating for awhile, since the dreams started, like the bone-shattering blow of grief is happening to someone else miles away. It also feels unpleasantly familiar, like confirmation, something he'd been hoping to disprove but without any real confidence that such an outcome was likely. He almost doesn't ask "how", voice and expression completely flat, because he already knows the answer, and he _knows_ that he knows.

Not that it matters, when he does ask; Trelawney doesn't actually know the how-- he wasn't nearby when it had all gone down, hadn't been connected officially to the gang-- he's fleeing to be cautious, not becuase he has to. But he does know the _where,_ and he tells Charles-- Charles, who has already seen the mountain in his dreams, whose expression is grim at further substantiation.

They don't linger in each other's presence much longer than that-- the conversation, the gaps that follow Trelawney's gently delivered account of Arthur's demise, should feel awkward, but neither of them can muster the emotional reserves required for awkwardness. Charles feels-- far away. He feels nothing, but the specific nothing that means that he will feel _a lot of something_ in the near future, for all that right now there is only numbness. He is aware that he is cold, a cold that has settled into his bones much farther and faster than anything purely physical should be capable of, so deeply that he is shivering slightly, that he can't make himself stop. "I-" Trelawney begins, and then stops, and sighs, and puts a warm hand on Charles shoulder, lets it linger there. It's sympathy, and more effective than any words could be, for all it does very little to assuage anything Charles is currently experiencing-- abstractly, he appreciates the gesture; concretely, he is stone. "I'm sorry." is all Trelawney actually says, letting the 'he was important to me too' trail wordlessly behind.

Charles remembers nothing else from that visit into town--- doesn't entirely remember anything for several days, actually. Trelawney and he go their separate ways, Charles runs the errands-- this _must_ be so, because the next thing he remembers is riding back to the tribe's temporary camp, observing his body distributing the supplies to their appropriate handlers as if his limbs belong to somebody else.

Rains Fall knows that something's wrong-- has known for several days, since the dreams started, and recognizes instantly that something has changed. Of course he would recognize it-- the man has paid enough blood to be familiar with many kinds of grief, has been witness and leader to people marked for eradication, has given so much and so often and at such huge cost. Rains Fall knows this specific grief, too: the loss of beloved kin, an absence both comparatively small and unbelievably uncomprehendingly massive, horrifying and sublime. He's heard the rumors, seen the newspapers himself-- he doesn't need Charles to explain, can read it on his face, recognizes it instantaneously. His understanding and sympathy is painful to bear, almost physically so-- that discomfort is the first thing Charles can remember feeling since he saw Trelawney-- he only asks one question, "when are you going back?"

And Charles doesn't know, because he is torn. He has promised, _promised_ , these people to see them to safety, and that's really-- what else is there to do now? It's not like there's anyone waiting for him down south anymore, a realization that is both bitter and cruel, which he inflicts on himself mercilessly-- Charles only knows how to move forward, only knows how to make himself into a machine, to try to shave parts of himself away so that he can _keep moving_ because to be still is to die-- but this wound is deep, very deep, deeper than any he's acquired before, and he doesn't really know where or how to begin that process. How do you remove something that's vital, what flesh can you strip away from a skeleton? And it feels important that he should go back. Because he'd made other promises too-- not in words, and not _really_ anyone but himself, but he had promised that Arthur wouldn't die alone. The least he could do now was-- and what a strange thought, because he wasn't spiritual and he didn't really put the same emotional emphasis on A Decent Burial, that idea had no spiritual resonance for him-- but Arthur did (or, rather, Arthur _had)_ had always gone to such great lengths to make sure that any of their fallen were _seen to_. It wasn't right that he should be left out to the mercy of wild animals and the elements, anonymous and forgotten.

None of this was right.

It wasn't right that Dutch had walked away from Arthur. That Micah had gotten so far into Dutch's good graces so quickly. That Dutch should've led any of them so far down with his empty promises, all smoke and no fire. That Dutch, who railed against the beast of America's rapacious greed, should demand so many sacrifices, take so much from so many after receiving such unwavering loyalty and devotion-- that he should be so unsatisfied with the slow immolation of his own people as to goad Eagle Flies to the vacuous and hollow glory of a martyr's death, with consequences measured in blood and obliteration for an entire people, ingenocide _._

It wasn't right for this man-- Rains Fall-- to be the one was asking him-- Charles-- such a question, offering comfort and support and understanding, as if Charles hadn't been involved in Dutch's schemes too, hadn't ridden with him willingly, reservations or otherwise. None of this was right. None of this should've happened.

Charles is not a spiritual man. Doesn't really believe much in Penance, or Righteousness-- only in doing what good he can for the people around him, whenever he can, to the best of his abilities, and he'd already failed to do that once for Rains Fall and Eagle Flies. He has already broken so many promises. It weighs on his mind; he tries to say no, that he would stay with them, see them safely to Canada-- that this was a promise he _would_ fucking keep--

But Rains Fall shakes his head, because _his_ people do have beliefs about the dead, and he'd understood enough about Arthur to know that this was something they shared, even if the specifics weren't quite hte same. And there's another truth slightly harder to hear-- Charles has already kept that promise: they aren't quite out danger, but they are very close, close enough to manage on their own. The Wapiti will welcome him back as one of them, but they have never been in the habit of depending on the fickle guilt or mercy of outsiders, even ones they have tentatively embraced-- Charles could come to them as an equal, but they would not be a distraction. He had to put his own house in order. There might be no one left _alive_ and waiting for him in the south, but the dead had needs, and they waited beside memories with patience timeless and sepulchral.

*

Charles had thought that sending Arthur away was the hardest thing he'd done, but he'd been wrong. Burying Arthur is harder.

Charles doesn't remember the ride back. Taima sees him safely there, and he's never been so grateful to have such a smart and clever horse: his grief is alien to her, but her human is not well, and so she takes care of him in that way that animals do when they know their humans are ailing.

He remembers snatches of the dreams throughout the journey-- the spirit beasts appear with greater regularly, characters unto themselves, speaking to each other and, eventually, to him. The panther-- who was(is) him and also was(is) not-him simultaneously, avatar and representative and protector and symbol and so alien an entity that he doesn't even try to understand it-- addresses him frequently, its voice beyond conventionally audible, spoken into bones rather than ears. (The sensation of hearing something through the intangible vibration of your teeth is _extremely unpleasant,_ he learns, even in that eerie nonreality of a dreamscape.)

Charles does remembers finding Arthur's horse-- a discovery he should've expected but that nevertheless takes him by surprise, jarring him badly, driving the reality of the situation deep into his chest and drawing him partially out of the dissociative fugue that has temporarily become his normal. It's a harsh spike, the first external, _physical_ confirmation that yes, this really did happen, and yes, Arthur really is dead, and no, he will never see Arthur alive again, and no, neither will anything ever be the same ever again.

Charles does _not_ remember finding, or burying, Arthur, and for that he is _deeply_ thankful.

He _does_ remember the grave-- remembers the importance of choosing _a spot Arthur would've liked,_ remembers spending a long time on the cross and the choosing of the words (both symbols of a religion to which neither of them adhered, for all Arthur's respect for the sanctity of burial), remembers going out of his way to find flowers and cuttings to plant on the grave.

(The grave was just too new, too fresh, too much a jarring break with the peaceful serenity of the carefully chosen ridgeline; it bore too obvious a resemblance to the jarring absence of Arthur he could feel inside him and couldn't ignore. That's probably moment he started to feel it properly, when the truth became bleak and stark and _real_ to him-- when the loss of someone he _loved_ burned away the last dregs of hazy and ephemeral protection offered by dissociative fugue, the pain of it a strange counterpoint to that bone-chill that had never quite left him since he'd seen Trelawney.)

He didn't sleep there, next to the grave-- he remembers that decision very keenly, coming on him as night began to fall, an unwelcome reminder that time and life would continue onward with or without him. It was very, very important to Charles that the last time he slept beside Arthur continue to be a memory of the living and breathing man, of when the two of them had been out on a job-- not to exchange it for this, for here, next to a corpse that he'd had to bury alone, separated by several feet of dirt and the insurmountable distance between the living and the dead.

He doesn't remember where he slept, but for vague snatches of finding some kind of natural shelter under the cover of deep night, of there being some interesting carvings on the wall, the kind that Arthur would always take the time to pause and draw when they'd go out roaming together. He remembers wondering who has Arthur's journal now, if it's possible to lay hands on it, or if it was lost in the fire that consumed the final camp.

He remembers that night's dream, because it's different for the first time in weeks. For once, he _doesn't_ see a series of memories that he wasn't technically present to encode, nor do the animals chase each other through his dreamscape, like Oedipus in their doomed effort to escape an ending that feels inevitable, whose aftermath he has just finished contending with (physically, anyway-- psychically, he only knows that the road is long, and that he's barely stepped onto it). This time, this dream, it's him and Taima and the panther and a strange bird-like figure from the center of the wall carvings, cardinal-headed and geometric. Dream Taima is nervous, shuffling and stamping, but doesn't flee their shelter-- just swings her head between bird-creature and panther, trying to see them both at once, as if to gauge which is the more dangerous. The bird figure pays no mind to the horse's nerves; it ignores all of them; it's carefully inspecting the wall, now absent the drawn representation of itself, but still covered in handprints of various sizes and in various colors of ochre, a lingering visual trace of an ephemeral human presence years old. It's the panther who speaks to him, and their conversation is different than usual, though it starts the same. Usually, Charles just says some version of "this shouldn't have happened, nothing should've happened this way," repeated like a mantra, like its repetition might bring him either solace or absolution (he doesn't know which), until the words cease to have any meaning beyond that proto-linguistic feeling of _wrong everything is wrong and now it will always be wrong and I don't want to feel this way._

Tonight, the panther sounds exasperated: {"Which part?"} it asks him, in his teeth.

This derails Charles, because the Panther has never asked him anything quite so blunt before. He blinks at it in confusion, the mantra vanished from his head, a brief and sudden stillness within an emotional deluge that he is trying very hard to weather.

{"Which part shouldn't have happened?"} the Panther clarifies, correctly identifying the meaning of his silence. {"The death of your.. lover? You're not the first to have that sentiment. Your grief is not unique. Your grief is common. It is a condition of your species."}

Charles is suddenly angry, a quick bright hot flash of rage that sweeps through him, comforting and repulsive for its familiarity-- rage is something he knows, something he understands, but rage is dangerous, especially when used to soothe one's own hurts. Rage makes things fester. He's an outlaw, has seen that in many men, has seen it in his own father back when his mother was taken, when his father looked at him and saw only someone he'd mislabeled as a daughter (common mistake at the time), who looked so much like his wife that it must'v been like looking at a ghost, a constant reminder of someone who was no longer there, an impediment to healing that he'd had been unwilling or incapable to contend with.

But despite that wariness, Charles still feels the anger, the pull of its dangerous riptide. Because the Panther has misunderstood something very fundamental, a further injustice given how deeply it is connected to him. Charles doesn't like the question in its voice as it says the word "lover", a blunt reminder of how much what he'd allowed to slip away between himself and Arthur, unspoken and cherished only privately. He doesn't like how cold the Panther's voice is, the way it apparently thinks that the only way for pain to be meaningful is for that pain to be unique-- because Charles knows that it isn't, he's seen this pain and its effects on so many people, rippling across and through groups and generations and cultures and causing so much more damage in its wake.

He'd worked so hard to prevent so much of this-- these new iterations of old traumas and grief-- and to fix what he couldn't prevent.

"All of it." Charles answers finally, the words carrying all the heat of his rage out of his chest, allowing it to dissipate in the air, leaving only tiredness in its wake. The tiredness characterizes the words he speaks next: "all of it," he repeats, "Arthur and Eagle Flies and all of what went down in Saint Denis and Kieran and Sean. Earlier probably. Maybe Blackwater. All of it."

The Panther looks at him speculatively, as if weighing the strength of his convictions. He recalls a memory of a lifetime ago, from when he was a child, fragmentary and incomplete: a story his father told him of a people far away in both time and geography, who believed in gods that weighed one's heart against a feather after death, damning those whose hearts were heavy to hell or to be eaten by monsters or something along those lines. That's what the Panther's gaze feels like, like something is weighing his heart, whether or not said heart appears to be still in his chest. He wonders how he compares to the feather. He wonders how Arthur's compares to the feather. He hopes Arthur's heart isn't going to be eaten by monsters.

The Panther says nothing for awhile, and Charles leans more heavily against the wall, allowing himself to focus on the sensation of cold stone on his back, on that half-painful half-soothing itch of one's too-tired eyes being closed after too long awake, on other random physical feelings that are unusual to experience so clearly in dreams. His mind is quiet, blessedly quiet, and he'll take that for the moment-- he wishes for the fugue back, but if this reprieve is all he can get, _he'll take it._

{"Blackwater's probably too far back."} The Panther finally says; Charles clenches his teeth at the voice, trying to get the feeling of their vibration to stop (a futile effort, because they're not actually vibrating); he opens his eyes. The Panther is looking at the bird figure, not at him, which the bird has finally turned its attention away from the wall, to the other entities surrounding it. It's smiling (how does it smile with a beak?). Taima is standing very very still now, as if she might melt into the wall and bypass the notice of these speaking animals that don't actually exist.

Charles is tired, so tired; everything hurts so much and he doesn't have anything left of either his emotional reserves or his emotional resilience, certainly no patience for confusion or uncertainty or to figure out the Panther's riddles. "What-" he begins to ask.

But the Panther doesn't look at him, just wishes its tail at him impatiently, in the way of all cats who are being bothered by a human when they'd like not to be. {"Go back to sleep."} it tells him. Charles thinks about protesting-- he's already asleep-- but he's too tired, so instead he just leans his head back against the stone wall, pressing his eyes closed, allowing his mind to drain of everything but the sensation of his heavy limbs and the unyielding chill of ragged stone that's lightly tangling his hair as his body moves minutely, getting comfortable. Eventually, he sinks into blissful emptiness, gray and buzzing and even _almost_ restful.

He doesn't wake again for a long time; when he does, it is to two unfortunately familiar sensations: first, nauseous fever chill , and second, the feeling that everything's just slightly not quite the same, shifted fractionally away from from an orientation that Charles had only just begun to accept as real.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There'll be an AN of mild substantiveness at the end, but it's not a warning. It's at the end because it does indicate something partially revealed by the contents of this chapter.
> 
> This chapter was hard to write.  
> re: how i characterize my fics and writing process, each one has its own separate set of characterizations, a little bespoke version of each of the characters specific to that fic that is slightly different from the others.  
> I was mildly worried that I'd broken this version of charles, because whenever i tried to plug into him after last chapter, after placing him back in the past, it was very much like "I'm sorry fuck the what??? -- bluescreen, program charles.exe has encountered an error and must reboot ... --"  
> We got there, though, in the end.  
> He's fine, he's fine.  
> Well, mostly fine.  
> ish?
> 
> (edited a spelling error)

One doesn't live the life Charles has without knowing how to process grief and pain, and so the part of him that knows what's waiting for him on the other side of consiousness-- what it means to wake up into a world with a future (but one that doesn't feel like yours)-- that part lets him come back to wakefulness slowly, grounded in sensations.

Just sensations.

And there are many of them, initially disconnected, slowly knitting into a coherence that actually grows _more_ confusing as its clarity increases.

But it starts simple: first, wherever he is, it is safe. It _feels_ safe, comfortable and familiar-- these are sounds and smells that he knows. This place feels like home.

He is covered in something warm and soft-- a blanket. No, blankets, plural; there is more than one, and the closest is softer than the scratchy familiarity of Taima's saddle blanket should be.

He is also laying on something soft-- something soft, horizontal, and slightly raised from the ground. Unusual, he thinks; he hasn't slept in anything resembling an actual bed for a very long time, possibly since before he _joined_ the Van Der Linde gang.

There are people around him-- lots of people. That wouldn't be entirely surprising, given that he's starting to think that he might've gone out in a fugue and rented himself a hotel room with which to buy himself some privacy and seclusion; people tended to be overwhelming to Charles at the best of times, and this was _not_ the best of times _\--_ but no, it couldn't be that, becuase these people are familiar. He can't make out who they are or what they're doing or saying, not clearly, but he knows the edges of their voices, knows these sounds, knows those footsteps, knows the _feel_ of these individuals beyond the ken of his other senses. Strange.

His arm hurts. It is a low, dull ache, constantly present as a low-level heat traveling down the offending limb, starting in the right shoulder and radiating out towards his chest. It becomes a sharp spike whenever he moves, even minutely, bracing to shift around and better hear the people around him, to make out who they are and what they are doing. The pain is distracting; he hisses, tensing, surprised both by its presence and its origin. When had he hurt his shoulder? How?

But the heat of the wound is not the only bodily sensation he can't quite contextualize: he also feels weak, physically, a little bit shaky and tired for all that he's clearly been unconscious for quite some time. There's the ghost edge of a chill, one unlike either of the other two that he's recently come to know-- this one feels like fever, a thought supported by the slight edge of queasiness he also feels-- or rather, like he's had a fever and is just now getting over the worst of it.

Also strange.

Charles doesn't want to open his eyes yet, so he casts his attention-- casts his mind-- out towards the people who are around him, trying to fill in some of the blanks through the recognition of sound. It's not _really_ sound that he catches-- a nuance that doesn't quite crest into conscious realization-- but nevertheless he recognizes the sensation of these people-- it's them who feel like home. Pearson, muttering as he goes through the motions of cooking by the chuckwagon. Hosea, lingering at a table, stabilizing and comfortable despite the low edge of uncertainty the older man feels about their situation, the rustle of his newspaper a wonderfully regular sound. Dutch, pacing like a restless tiger in his gilded cage of a tent. Molly, dissatisfied and shifting and resentful, some few feet away from him. Micah is nowhere to be felt or heard ( _good_ , growls the part of him attuned to the panther, _that rat._ ). Arthur is sleeping fitfully in his tent, resting his exhausted body despite his efforts at tirelessness. Javier is near the campfire, restringing his guit---

wait, Arthur.

The _how_ of his awareness of the other man escapes his notice entirely, as he tries to push himself up to stand in one motion; unfortunately, hd tries to leverage himself up on his injured side; pain spikes down the arm and he collapses in a heap, eyes open and breathless as the network of disconnected sensations knits itself properly into a scene.

He is in a tent, in camp. He is on a cot-- that's why it's soft and raised from the ground, why his loose hair has been tangling against fabric, rather than the hard stone of the improvised shelter he remembers going to sleep in. The camp is familiar-- one of the last ones he remembers that wasn't primarily characterized by fear and tension, where it seemed their luck might not have been bleeding away, as Arthur's life had been through that terrible cough of his. Charles runs momentarily aground on the fabric-- the linens that cover the tents, textures and patterns he knows and took comfort in for _months,_ and which he _very clearly_ remembers having seen last as charred embers, clinging to the remains of the camp in Murfee country. But this isn't that country-- this isn't Beaver Hollow-- this is Horseshoe overlook, in the Heartlands, and everything around him seems whole and unmarred in a way he can't quite believe.

"Slow down, or you'll be stuck there longer."

The voice-- like so many things here-- is also familiar, a ghost from a past that should be well-dead now, though its owner was one of the few survivors-- he adjusts himself to look at the person sitting beside his cot, making sure that his weight _isn't_ pressed against his injury this time. The person to whom the voice belongs is radiating something else he recognizes, too, though that more personally: grief, this person is grieving, and the wound of the loss is fresh and strong and irreconcilable; she is missing a part of herself, and she knows that she will never get it back. More than anything, it's that recognition-- the strength of that recognition, the feeling he knows so well from his own reality these past few weeks-- that has him staring sharply at her, at Sadie.

And though it's Sadie who's sitting in that chair, it's a very different Sadie from the one who he came to rely on for so much only a few short months ago, who helped him keep the gang together at Lakay, who had been a better leader through that time than Dutch had ever been. This is Sadie from the beginning of her time with the gang, when she was still more ghost than woman, fresh from the loss of her husband and her home, before she had galvanized that pain into something that made her unstoppable, awesome and terrible in her righteous momentum.

Charles has new respect for Sadie now; he is not sure can do that himself; he isn't sure he can (could have?) survive(d) it; the loss is too catastrophic, the part of himself that is (was?) Arthur's-

He could (can) _feel_ Arthur, now, still alive- and that's the way he answers Sadie's statement, with "Arthur?", as if that's a question she can make any sense of. He tries to crane his head around in the direction from which he can feel Arthur (the direction of where the man's tent had been, his memory supplies) without further jostling his injury.

Sadie's voice is hoarse and impatient, like she doesn't have time to figure out the puzzle of fever-struck injured men over whom it is her currently her job to be watching. "Is fine, despite himself." she finishes his sentence for him, "His fever broke this morning, same as yours." her expression turns slightly sly here, like she's figuring something out that intrigues her, despite her intention to keep an emotional barrier staunchly erected between her and the gang, "He asked after you when he woke, too."

Ordinarily this bit of information might've pleased Charles, might've made that kind of memory that he ferreted away into the secret parts of himself wherein he stored every compliment and defense and affection and stolen moment he'd ever had from or with Arthur. Right now, however, he is far more concerned with all the things that aren't making sense-- which is most of them-- "What happened?"

Sadie frowns at him, as if this answer should've been obvious. "Hosea said the wagon you were riding in, when you came here, lost its wheel, and you fell in the river." she says, voice a little slow, as if she's concerned he isn't as recovered as he seems. "Arthur went in after you immediately, to make sure you hadn't hit your head or something. You were fine, but," she gestures at his hurting shoulder, "You still had that shot from Blackwater and he'd cut himself up trying to hunt up in Colter. Hosea figures there was something in the water that got into both of your wounds."

Charles can only deepen his frown, because though he is getting _more information, i_ t continues to make _no more_ sense. "I wasn't _at_ Blackwater." he says, slowly, like he's working through the puzzle, which probably does not help assure Sadie of his sanity. "And it was my hand that was injured, not my shoulder." He lifts his left hand, gingerly placing it on his injured shoulder, pressing lightly against the area from which the pain is radiating, taking stock of the injury. It definitely _does_ feel like a mostly-healed gunshot wound, and it also definitely does feel inflamed, like it's been recently subject to the kind of infection that Sadie's describing. The proof is right there, on his own body, but it doesn't square with any of the things he's been experiencing, and what are the chances that Arthur's got the same kind of injury, for the same length of time?

What are the chances that Arthur's actually still alive?

Sadie stands, comes closer to his head, reaching down to touch his forehead with the back of her hand-- taking stock of the fever. He rankles at the touch-- Charles is, and always has been, _very specific_ about physical contact, just as he's very deliberate about the words he speaks and the people he lets close to him-- but he tries not to physically react, becuase it's pretty clear that Sadie's been tending to him, and that he's needed the tending. "How long have I been down?" he grits out instead, and then tenses slightly as her hands stray lower, towards his chest, before the hand stops, Sadie obviously hesitating.

"Just a few days. I'm gonna check this." she tells him softly, her voice clearly _attempting_ a soothing tone for all its hoarseness and emotional exhaustion; "I need to see if I should get Hosea, see if this-- the wound-- is getting worse." It occurs to him that he probably hasn't been in a state where she's needed to get permission for contact like this, and that-- given her the impatience present in her voice despite her attempts to hide it-- she'd much prefer if he was still unconscious. He nods, forcing himself to relax as she draws the shirt off of his shoulder, fingers light as they search for excessive heat at the edge of the bandages covering the wound. He then tenses for another reason, as another thought occurs to him-- if he's been out for a _few days_ with a wound like this, then someone must've been changing his bandages-- and probably also his clothes.

Sadie draws her hand away quickly. "Hurts?" she asks sharply, looking concerned, because pain from such a soft touch as that probably _would_ indicate that an infection was worsening, and around the chest is a bad place for a wound to go septic.

"No-- no." Charles says quickly, and then cringes more obviously, this discomfort internal, as he tries to think about how he can wave it away, justify his expression without having to ask-- to explain-- Or, perhaps more importantly, how to figure out-- how much everyone knows. "No pain, just--"

But the confusion or discomfort or whatever else Sadie reads on his face must be explanation enough-- a sure indicator that she knows _something_ \-- becuase she looks sympathetic. "Oh," she says. "You mean-" and she doesn't says anything else, instead motioning to the front of her body, as if this means something to the both of them.

And it does. Charles presses his fingers to his forehead with the hand not attached to an injured shoulder, nodding. "Who knows." You never could anticipate how people were going to react to this kind of revelation, about his body-- but whatever the hell else is currently happening around him is complicated enough that Charles wan't to add _this_ dynamic onto it-- doesn't want to deal with the Van Der Linde gang deciding arbitrarily that they know him better than he knows himself, that he is less of a man for some arbitrary fluke of his birth.

Sadie's voice is surprisingly soft, gentle and soothing and much more genuine than when she was trying to cover her impatience only moments before. "Only we who were tending you. Me and Hosea. We ain't gonna tell anyone else, don't worry." Charles uncovers his face, his eyes meeting hers. There's a lot of things he wants to say-- a lot of things he usually wants to say in this situation-- that he _is_ a _man_ and that he _does_ know the truth of that, no matter what other people think his body means-- but she isn't looking at him with disgust or disbelief or pity or anything else that he expects to see. She's looking at him with the expression of someone who's lived lived through some shit, someone who knows that there are far more important things in life than what the people around you have in their pants. He says nothing, and after a second she quirks half a smile and stalks away, over to the chickens and the horses, where she used to spend so much time brooding. Evidently, he doesn't seem so lost in fever that she feels the need to get Hosea, and he's left alone with his thoughts, desperately scrabbling among them for any kind of purchase.

*

He hasn't wandered far from the cot a few hours later, only sitting up and idly distracting himself with the contents of one of his saddlebags, when Dutch comes to see him. Like Sadie, this is a Dutch he recognizes from far away-- this is Dutch at the beginning of the descent, before the months dogged by Pinkertons and loss. The thought is a jolt to Charles-- and not because he's still unused to _when_ he is in time; he's spent the last several hours cataloguing the people around him and comparing them against his memories of this place, noting where they line up and, importantly, where they don't. ( _Blackwater_ , he thinks, idly touching the warm skin around his injury, _I never was at Blackwater.)_ No, the thought is a jolt because he realizes that Dutch is marked by grief, too-- that probably part of why things went so foul is _because_ Dutch's reaction to loss was so extreme and immediate and paranoid. Their leader, self-styled as holy king, is too proud to acknowledge loss and grief as real things, tangible weights that exert their toll and _demand_ healing whether or not one tries to ignore them, and so, in a man like Dutch, grief will fester, will become a poisonous hunger for revenge that-- as Charles knows too well-- will consume all of them completely.

Dutch had always been the one to preach against revenge-- this Dutch is still that man, not yet consumed by the fire, and not yet entirely aware of the danger he is blithely leading all of them into. This Dutch, Charles recalls, does not yet believe that the Pinkertons are so well organized, and that Leviticus Cornwall is as dangerous as he he will prove to be. This is not the Dutch who scowled at Arthur in Lakay and told him that perhaps their gang, their _family_ , clung too strongly to life, considered it too valuable, against the weight of his own greed.

But he will be that Dutch, and soon.

It's a strange thought to hold onto-- for Charles to keep both of these versions of the man in his head at the same time-- as Dutch ducks into the tent that has been temporarily reserved for Charles's healing, looking magnanimous and proud, a king visiting an injured loyal knight. "Mr. Smith," Dutch says, in that orator's tone of his, a big smile on his face, "I'm glad to see you well. You gave us quite a scare there, son." he puts his hand on Charles' good shoulder, giving it a squeeze. "How are you feeling?" And this isn't an act: Dutch cares, Dutch _really does_ want to know how he is feeling, wishes him genuinely well.

"Much better." Charles responds, rolling his injured shoulder slightly, testing the movement. It does feel like it's healing well, for all he doesn't remember _actually getting_ what seems like quite a serious injury.

"Good, good." Dutch says; he doesn't sit down, but he does seem to approve both of Charles' attitude and of his healing. "Just don't take it too fast, son. You're one of my best men, and I need you well. You and Arthur."

Charles is momentarily confused, frightened-- does Dutch know something Charles doesn't, to have mentioned Arthur and his mysterious parallel injury? Charles is, for once, glad for whatever it is that makes him so hard to read to those outside his own head, as he looks sharply up at Dutch, assessing the man's generous expression. But, no, there's no accusation there-- just a Dutch who means every word he is saying, warmly wishing a man he's accepted as a surrogate son (though perhaps not as much of one as Arthur and John) a speedy recovery, expressing pride in Charles' abilities and his actions for the gang.

Dutch doesn't notice Charles' scrutiny, adding, his eyes on Charles' injured shoulder "I haven't forgotten what you did for us at Blackwater, son. We could've used you on that train." The last words are quieter, almost more of an afterthought than a statement actually directed at Charles, but Charles hones in on them, internally cringing-- there's an answer to a question he hadn't quite yet formed coherently, and some dashed hopes alongside it. He isn't so early to prevent them from antagonizing Leviticus Cornwall, to cut off that snake's head before it has a chance to strike.

"How'd it go, the train job?" Charles asks carefully, keeping his voice mild and curious.

Dutch's expression darkens, and he shakes his head. "Don't you worry about that-- we got some bonds, and that's the important thing." Bloody, then, Charles realizes-- bloody, without the influence of he or Arthur to mitigate it, but not so bloody that the gang had felt any losses, or else he'd've surely heard about it by now. Dutch doesn't seem keen to provide any further details-- his voice is firm when he continues on, refocusing the conversation on Charles himself, "I've got the girls scoping out leads at Valentine, and you'll join them when you're well, but _take the time to heal,_ Mr. Smith. Hosea says you're lucky to still have use of that arm, twice now, and I need you-" he points at Charles, using that burst of fire in his speech that he always brings out for emphasis, when he's talking about and to _his_ people, "I need _all of you_ in your best condition, so we can get some money and shake the law and get out west to virgin country. Do you understand me, Mr. Smith?"

 _No Tahiti yet_ , Charles thinks wryly, but his face is calm and impassive as he nods, giving an affirmative "yes." This seems to satisfy Dutch, who smiles at him broadly, genuinely. Their leader pats Charles' good shoulder once more, squeezing firmly again. "It is _very good_ to see you awake, son." he says, a little more quietly, and then strolls out of the tent, presumably to continue the business of his leadership.

Charles sighs deeply, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back against one of the poles that support the tent's covering. This Dutch-- it makes things harder, makes him _remember_ how long _he himself_ had been willing to keep the faith, to follow along in Dutch's plans, trusting Dutch's history of success to get them out of bind after successively tighter bind. It had been meeting Rains Falls, working with the Wapiti, watching Dutch willingly use their eradication as a _distraction_ to use for his own survival, that had cured Charles of that particular folly-- and the Dutch who had just left was a Dutch that Charles could still imagine hesitating to make those decisions, who still remembered what he had to left lose and how much it mattered (his gang, his _family,_ the _people_ around him). This was a Dutch that Charles wanted so badly to follow, so that he could let things be simple-- to make an attempt at, perhaps, plain recovery-- to let his current situation be what it seemed: an impossible second chance to do everything again differently.

Perhaps, if they could keep Micah out of the man's ear…

But, no. Charles shakes his head, forcing himself to remember other things, to remember elements of Dutch's ruthlessness that had preceded their post-Rhodes flight and its desperation. People didn't change that much, that quickly. The brutal Dutch of those times is here too, inside the warm Dutch he remembers and wants to follow and serve-- they are the same person, just two different faces. He has to remember that. Has to remember that he can't save Dutch, but he probably _can_ save Arthur-- or, at least, he is going to go down trying-- and that maybe he can save some other people too, draw them away from camp before things get too crazy-- and keep Eagle Flies away from Dutch, keep all of the gang from the Wapiti (which, for now, includes himself, for as much as part of him wants to return to the tribe, to just pledge himself directly to Rains Fall, a king worthy of that title.)

Charles has no idea what's happening, how and why he's apparently back in a past that _resembles_ \-- but isn't quite the same as-- the one he remembers, but he doesn't have time to waste, not in confusion or anything else.

Dutch is right about one thing, he thinks, cringing as he shifts again and his shoulder complains. Charles does have to give himself time to heal, which is something he's always found hard to do-- but he can't afford to re-aggravate this injury for what would be, apparently, the third time.

*

Charles joins everyone around the familiar campfire that evening, and it's almost too overwhelming for him to take, given that he already needs people in relatively small doses. But he'd always loved the campfire, for all that his was a mostly-silent presence there- loved the way that people were honest around it, even when the results of that honesty were uncomfortable; loved the way it made people feel safe and together and warm; loved the way it was the camp's center in moments of both celebration and grief. This feels like both to him-- celebration _and_ grief-- and he finds himself grateful oncemore that he rarely expresses any of his internal maelstrom of emotions and thoughts onto the surface of body. These people-- Dutch's family, _Arthur's family--_ they're his family too, and sitting around them for the first time in (to their memory) a couple days and (to his memory)many months and a lifetime's worth of loss, reminds him of this fact. He even enjoys Lenny's tendency to talk too much, and with words fine enough to reveal that the kid ought to have been anywhere but among a band of outlaws; he is even happy to see Uncle, who ordinarily annoys him beyond words.

He has missed these people.

And the person he has missed most of all joins them that night, too, greeted as enthusiastically as Charles himself hours before: Arthur, an Arthur who is _alive._ The others swarm the man, when he appears-- Charles would've too, were it not for the spike of emotion that seems to impale him in place, stealing the breath from his lungs simply to confirm that Arthur is still breathing.

He hadn't believed it completely-- hadn't let himself believe that this was real, hadn't let himself anywhere near the man's tent lest he see Arthur's chest unmoving-- until this moment, and even while all of his instincts seek to rebel against easily accepting the truth of what he's experiencing as anything other than a prolonged and extremely vivis hallucination, Charles does not want to look this gift horse in the mouth. He wants this to be real, whatever this is; he wants this second chance. He wants Arthur. Arthur who is still alive. Arthur, who perhaps he can wrest from this violence before it claims so many of them, and permanently. (Because this time will be permanent, he feels that in his bones; whatever second chance he's been given, he knows quite well that it will be the only one.)

Arthur, who is still alive.

Arthur, who meets his eyes over the folk of the gang who are returning to the fireside, expression clearly relieved to see Charles awake and among them. "There's room here for you, Arthur." Charles says, a familiar line in his low grumble of a voice, and Arthur smiles widely enough for the both of them as he takes Charles up on the offer, settling down beside him. Charles wants to do so many things-- wants to reach out and hug him, to lean against him, to curl up around Arthur possessively like some huge cat or a snake and never let him free, to never let Arthur out of his sight, wants to kiss him and claim him and none of those are things he can do here, but goddamn he _wants_ to. Arthur is less reserved, though-- has always been freer with the expression of emotions than Charles can allow himself to be-- and so Arthur is the one to reach over and pull Charles into a tight but gentle one-armed hug, careful of Charles' injury but no less desperate for that care. Charles can feel an echo of the relief he's feeling in that contact, can feel that it's mutual. It's far shorter than Charles would like, that hug-- it has to be-- and Arthur doesn't complain that Charles allows himself to lean perhaps closer than they might ordinarily for the rest of the evening. "I'm glad to see you well." Charles says to him, in undertone, and he means that in so many ways: healed from whatever comparatively small injury that was the mirror of his own, and to see him still alive at all, healthy, body unravaged either by tuberculosis or months of flight and violence.

"Likewise," Arthur answers, and lets his attention drift back to the people around him, relaxed in the way of wolves at rest among their packmates.

Charles appreciates the silent companionship-- it has been something he has always loved about Arthur, the man's willingness to give him his space and his quiet, the way that these things don't seem to unnerve him as they do some others of the camp-- needs it, while he continues to assess and reassess the events that he can remember, both before and after waking. He-- this-- he doesn't know what's going on, doesn't know why he's here in the past, in Horseshoe Overlook, but he's not--- Arthur's alive, and he needs Arthur alive, and he's going to protect that. It was not a hallucination-- not the past, not the grave, not any of the things he both does and does not remember, the things that he _doesn't want to remember._ Those things were _real,_ they happened, for all that if he told anyone _here_ about them now, they'd likely chalk those up to the fever he'd only just shaken. Nor is _this_ a hallucination-- whatever and wherever and whenever and _however_ he was, this place he now finds himself is every bit as real as those memories he doesn't want, the ones of lowering Arthur into the ground.

Arthur is alive, _this_ Arthur, he can feel the man's body heat against the night's creeping chill as they sit next to each other around the fire.

Charles lets himself relax into that shared heat, lets the pressing confusion of what he's found himself in fade to a low thrum in the back of his mind. Everything in the world doesn't _need_ an explanation, and it certainly doesn't need one _right now_. Right now, he is going to let himself just _feel_ this, just focus on the presence of a living breathing man beside him, and the living breathing camp around him, and ground himself in that familiarity and comfort.

But goddamn will he have some questions the next time he sees that damn panther.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as indicated in the story, some of the events of the timeline have changed; what I want to indicate additionally is that the timeline Charles has just left doesn't _entirely_ line up with canon; some of the events of that timeline will get moved into this new one, and will _not_ have happened before. Bison hunting is the earliest of those, as far as I'm planning RN, that I'm going to move-- it did NOT happen previously but and will happen in this version of events instead.
> 
> Thank you, as always, for reading!  
>  I can be found at [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/00101010) and no other socials. Info for sending me prompts by email can be found there.  
>  (if anyone wants invites to PF, i have them and am happy to share.)
> 
> \- 42 / BooleanWildcard / Asterisk / * / 00101010


	3. !CW mentions child abuse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter has a content warning, and because of the specific nature of the content warning, I'm going to mention up here, and then get more specific in the bottom AN.
> 
>  **this chapter involves mentions of child abuse, with some specifics, and some of the emotional repercussions of that child abuse.** If this is not something you can read, please exercise appropriate caution. This is a chapter that should be okay to skip-- it's mostly Arthur introspection. **There is a brief summary of the chapter in the lower AN,** if you want to know what happens more specifically. **The specific sections within the fic that discuss this topic have additionally been marked with some special character tags-- *!* at the beginning and ~!~ at the end.**  
>   
>  I do this from an abundance of caution, because this kind of content is pretty serious, and because even mild mentions of this topic can really put someone in a bad place, and so I think it's worth being careful. While other characters might mention abuse they have experienced in passing elsewhere in the story in more generic ways, should anything go into this level of detail or beyond, it will treated similarly to this.  
> (I also flag any scene that involves explicit descriptions of sex acts, though that more in the spirit of allowing any readers who want to avoid explicit scenes generally).
> 
>   
> this chapter's pretty long. Arthur had a lot to say, apparently.
> 
>   
> I also HAVE made a decision regarding the S/G stuff-- gonna keep it very low-key, present but unnamed, something that shouldn't be too jarring for people who aren't already familiar with that trope. :3 it deserve its' own focused project, which just means i have some more to write in future~~  
> addl 6/1: caught some accidental corrections from autocorrect-- it changes "Bessie" to "Betsy". Plz let me know if I miss changing any of those back.

Arthur Morgan is restless.

Arthur Morgan is restless for a few different reasons.

The first of them is predictable, banal, and no less frustrating for being expected: he is healing from a physical injury, always a slow and painful process, one that demands an awareness of one's own limits that he's never been particularly capable of maintaining, with or without patience. Worse, this is an injury on his leg: a long, mean laceration up the meat of his inner thigh, one he's now twice lucky isn't a lot worse.

He'd been being an idiot, up in Colter-- gone hunting, which is something he _knows quite well_ he's no good at, and with a weapon he's never quite managed to figure out: a bow. It'd been too damn quiet up there, with too little game around, all of the animals probably snowed in as bad as they were up, in that abandoned mining town. Nevertheless, the camp had been hungry, and so it had fallen to him to provide-- Arthur Morgan, the strong one, always the one people went to when they needed something.

A gun would've spooked any game for miles-- an observation helpfully supplied by none other than Charles Smith, who'd been making moves to come along when Pearson had whined Arthur into trying his luck against the wilderness. Arthur had denied Charles that request; he wasn't a smart man, but he wasn't stupid either, and anyone with half a brain could tell that Charles wasn't in any state to ride, not with that gunshot through his shoulder. So Arthur'd gone out alone, borrowing an extremely reluctant Charles's bow, waving off the man's insistent offers to at least do some basic tracking or show him how to string it. "You worry too much-- I'll be fine," he'd drawled, impatient bravado of his voice covering that little bit of foolish pride whispering in his ear about not making a goddamn fool of himself in front of such an attractive man as Charles Smith, and especially _not_ with a weapon that Charles had already mastered.

That was a decision he'd come to regret, because he'd gotten no farther than a quarter mile before his plan had collapsed under the weight of that pride, an he'd made a fool of himself regardless-- worse, too, for being alone in dangerously cold conditions with no company outside his horse. Stringing the weapon wasn't as easy as he'd remembered it being, particularly since it wasn't actually Arthur's weapon-- it was Charles's bow, made by the very man with himself in mind: a master huntsman who'd been running alone for over a decade, slightly shorter but broader than Arthur, and almost certainly stronger in the arms and upper body. It'd resisted something awful, when he'd tried to pull its ends down to tie the bowstring between them; he was unfamiliar with the knots, and his grip had been off, and so the bow had slipped under tension, snapping up and outwards to strike at him like a snake, as if mad to be touched by the incorrect user. The kinetic force locked up in the supple wood had sliced open his thigh, an injury more painful-- and embarrassing- - than truly dangerous on its own. With the cold, though, he'd been lucky to get back.

Charles, torn between obvious concern and exasperation ("I worry too much." he'd repeated flatly, when Arthur had staggered off his horse, leg and saddle covered in blood), had told him he was lucky-- a bow under tension could've cut him much deeper, or in a more vital place, with it's pointed ends. He'd immedietly offered to tend to the wound, and Arthur had accepted, despite such treatment ordinarily being something he'd only tolerate from only Hosea or Mrs. Grimshaw; Arthur didn't even like Strauss touching him when vulnerable, and the man was _technically_ their doctor. But Charles'd seemed more relieved than angry about the whole thing-- a statement that could not be said of Dutch, who acted as if Arthur had injured himself on purpose, the way he stalked into Arthur's room while Charles was cared for the wound, growling like a tiger. "Hosea tells me you're not gonna be able to ride for a bit-- how could you let yourself be so foolish, son?" he'd demanded, nostrils flared and eyes wide, overreacting "Right before we ride out for that train job? John and Charles're injured, Davey's dead, Mac and Sean are who knows where, Hosea ain't cut out for this kind of robbin'-- at this rate I'm gonna have to rob that train by my own damn self!" Charles'd had his back to Dutch, crouched over Arthur's injury, sewing it closed with careful hands-- he'd opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again when Arthur shot him a look-- Dutch was Arthur's parent, and thus his problem.

"Come off it, Dutch." Arthur had answered, the annoyance in his voice lengthening the words, giving them a snap that showed how little his surrogate father's infamous temper intimidated him. "It ain't like I did this on purpose." He knew Dutch was riled up with pre-robbery nerves, and possibly operating under a common misperception that the bow-- often mistaken for being the gun's simpler cousin-- was a weapon so 'primitive' that anyone who could shoot a gun could pick it up easily, a misperception he knew better than to voice in front of Charles, even to rebuke it. "You can put off the train job if you ain't got enough men-- there'll be more trains, Dutch. They're coming through this country _more_ often these days, not less." It was a snipe he had been unable to resist taking, still frustrated by the clusterfuck that was Blackwater and all those broken dreams of fleeing out west, out beyond the vanguard of creeping civilization.

Dutch's frustrated expression had darkened, eyes narrowing at the impudence of his eldest son-- he'd never been able to bear criticism well, and his skin was thinner for all their recent losses. "At least you had the sense not to do this _before_ we'd gone for Colm." he spat, turning, the motion fluid with pent up frustration. "We will go after this train with or without you, Arthur-- we are not brought so low that we cannot pull off a simple train job!" This said while he stalked off, leaving in a worse temper than he'd arrived.

Charles-- who had paused the stitching during Dutch's minor tirade- picked it up again, earning a wince and a hiss from Arthur, who'd been scowling after his father's retreating form. "Was it wise to antagonize him?" but Charles's question was neutral, without any of the admonishment that Arthur might've expected from such words.

Arthur'd shrugged, earning a displeased hum from Charles as the action made his leg move- Charles placed a broad hand briefly on his knee, grip firm, to remind him to keep the limb still when Charles had a needle so close in hand. "Probably not," Arthur'd answered, somewhere between sullen and unconcerned. "He'll be fine, though. Dutch is always like this before a job. Tense." Charles hadn't seemed convinced, making that noncommittal hum of his-- a gesture whose frankness Arthur would've found deeply frustrating in any other man. Charles was an exception, though.

Charles is always an exception-- that's why Arthur'd jumped into the river after Charles, when the damn wagon had lost a wheel on the way to Horseshoe Overlook. Arthur hadn't even thought about it, had bounced right off the driver's platform and was waist deep in the water as soon as he'd registered that Charles had fallen, heart beating in his throat-- falls from much lower could kill a man, and while the water wasn't _too_ deep or fast-moving, there'd been plenty of rocks to land poorly on. If Charles had hit on his head--

But no, Charles had landed on his back, cursing up a storm at the way the impact had jostled his mostly-healed shoulder injury, opening it back up again. He'd been grateful enough for Arthur's assistance out of the water, but both of them had been exposed to whatever miasma was floating down the river from the towns upstream, and it was enough to aggravate both injuries, causing an unpleasant infection, and requiring them to take yet more time away from action.

Though, if he is honest with himself, Arthur can't say that either the exposure or the original injury warranted such an extreme physical reaction-- a fever for several days? Sure, unboiled water from a river wasn't great for such wounds, but he and Charles are both strong and spry, it shouldn't've put them out for so long. But human bodies are strange in both their resilience and their weaknesses, and Arthur can't deny the shakiness or the exhaustion which follows his fever breaking, nor the fact that both he and Charles had been the only ones to both fall ill and to fall in that river. It had to have been that.

That's life-- life, and their shit luck, ever since Blackwater.

At least Dutch is in a better mood after robbing that train. Arthur doesn't like what he's heard of how that robbery went down, but the take was certainly good: an oil magnate's private train, it hadn't carried many passengers, but it made up for that lack with plenty of finery: cigars, expensive liquors (that the gang was happily drinking like ordinary rotgut), fancy baubles of the sort that Fences paid well for, some cash, and (most importantly) bonds-- a little specific, but worth good money as soon as Hosea could find a buyer. Micah, of course, had executed several train guards, once they'd been chased from the gaudy car they'd barricaded themselves in with dynamite, and been subsequently disarmed-- literally executed, to hear Lenny shakily tell it, voice low and troubled when Arthur asks-- had made the guards turn their backs to him and shot them in the head like a one-man firing squad-- but Dutch seems to find that forgivable in light of the raid's spoils, had called Micah's wanton delight in violence an "enthusiasm that had an unfortunate tendency to ran away with the man". It doesn't sit well with Arthur-- the Van Der Linde gang, they're bad men, and people talk about _Dutch's Boys_ with reasonable fear, but they weren't supposed to be _killers_ , not the kind who kill in cold blood-- but Dutch will hear none of his misgivings. "They were _guards_ , Arthur. They would've done the same for us, if they'd had the chance, no hesitating. It's unfortunate, but it's behind us, and Micah is a good man. _Trust me,_ son. I know these things. I knew it for you, and I know it for him."

Dutch-in-a-better-mood doesn't take Arthur's accidental reactivation of his injury as personally-- scowls, shakes his head, grumbles slightly about him knowing better and that Mr. Smith is a plenty capable man and doesn't need Arthur to play dashing knight errant and rescue him from falling in a river-- but this time the words are just on the right side of teasing, because Dutch and Hosea are his fathers, and they do love him, and they are well aware of his inclinations. Arthur is also pleased to note that Dutch's slight annoyance _doesn't_ carry over to Charles, that he genuinely wishes the man a speedy recovery. Enough cannot be said for that sense of satiation after the successful completion of a job with a good take, and what it does for their leader's outlook on life-- it's a feeling Arthur knows well, like that comfortable limb-heaviness after sex, but that lasts for several days.

But Dutch's happier mood is also an average, not necessarily a perfectly consistent thing, and it doesn't carry out much beyond himself, to the camp at large. Everyone else is worried and hungry, so terribly hungry, and that doesn't improve any moods. Only Dutch and Micah eat well; the rest take either less than the share they are accorded by the spoils of the gang's implicit hierarchy, or they are too low in that hierarchy to receive as much as they need. Arthur himself pays too much attention to the people around him-- his family-- to justify filling his own plate whenever he gets hungry-- once a day, and once a day only, and the cans and snacks and biscuits he normally ferrets away for himself in his trunk and his pack all go to Abigail or Pearson, to give to Jack or to contribute to the camp as a whole. It annoys him to be one of the few so considerate-- just as it annoys him that Charles takes less than he probably ought, given his healing wound-- but as an enforcer, it is not really his place to do that kind of babysitting, over Charles or over anyone less considerate of their failing resources. Hosea, though-- it _is_ Hosea's place, and Hosea is not shy with the criticisms and impatience that he levels at Dutch, snapping at him with all the frustration that Dutch seems to have shrugged off since their arrival in the heartlands. It's reasonable frustration-- he's the one who has to actually _unload_ those bonds, after all, which is really hard to do in a backwater like this (especially after the attention that the robbery gets), and he's _always_ been the one with the better head on his shoulders, the cool and soothing counterpoint to Dutch's temper and hot passions. But a frustrated Hosea goes and picks at Dutch, bickering and snipping the way they did when they two were both still lovers, back before Bessie-- and then Dutch gets riled up and frustrated, snaps back, feels ashamed of himself, and they both go off to their respective corners to lick their wounds and brood.

It's not a new dynamic, but it's not a comfortable one, either, and it feels _worse_ since Blackwater-- but maybe that's an artifact of close quarters, of Arthur's actually being around to observe it, instead of out ranging, like he'd much rather do.

This damn wound can't close up fast enough. He loves his family-- he _really, really_ loves his family-- but that doesn't mean he can spend all his time living in their pockets. They clash, as all families do; they snap at each other like frustrated wolves, trapped in a cage too small for all of them.

And-- of course, as is the nature of family-- all the good spots to hide lurk on the outskirts of camp are already occupied by people similarly seeking some privacy to brood.

Sadie lingers around the horses, and he _truly_ does not begrudge her the wordless comfort that is the company of animals; he can't begin to conceptualize her loss, can only see the effects of it, and already it scares him with how lost and lonely and scared she seems, newly alone in the world, without her closest companion. Arthur has never been so close to another human as that, used to think the idea that such a loss could leave marks on the soul was the kind of dramatic overstatement common to romance novels, the ones that Hosea doesn't admit he sometimes reads-- but on Sadie's face, in the way she carries herself, the way she looks around, the way she responds to him, he can see the truth of that line, and it's not nearly so idyllic and glorious as those books would have it appear. He goes out of his way to talk to her regardless, accepting her responses as gracefully as he can, whether they be silence or admissions of pain or anger at the world or the desperate verbal strikes of those whose lives have been suddenly upended. It scares him, the intensity of her pain, the way he can see it in her face; he wants to give her comfort, if only to remind her that she doesn't have to be so alone as she certainly feels. He is clumsy, emotionally, and he knows that, and so he offers that comfort the only way he knows how: he comes around and talks to her, takes what she gives him, and remains patient and persistent, the kind of patience he only knows how to show to horses and dogs and cats. It's all that he can do for her, and _sometimes_ it even seems to help.

Her expression haunts him, and worse because sometimes he can see its ghost in Charles' face, carefully hidden, visible only in an instant and gone as soon as he notices. Arthur doesn't understand the presence of such grief on in Charles-- assumes it's the inevitable byproduct of their lifestyle, perhaps the reason the man ran alone for so long-- but he doesn't like to see it there. He doesn't like to see any of his brothers-in-arms hurting.

John, of course, has stolen the best spot in the camp-- Horseshoe Overlook is aptly named, and John has claimed the best section of 'overlook' for himself, sitting on a stump and staring out into the distance whenever he's not fighting with Abigail. Arthur hates to hear the latter-- jealous that John has acquired something that Arthur'd been stupid enough to walk away from once himself. John's absence is still a wound that feels fresh to him, and twice for how easily Dutch accepted him back into the fold, an exception he doubts would've been made for him, were it Arthur in John's place. The feeling is mutual, because on the rare instance where Arthur _does_ approach the younger man, John whips around and snarls at him, as if he has become wolves responsible for the angry red marks across his face. Thus, they avoid each other, circling at a distance, dogs that don't actually _want_ to engage in the territorial battle they know is inevitable if either gets too close-- which means that John gets to keep that spot on the ridge, and Arthur is left prowling around camp, trying to avoid being roped into conversation by likes of Bill or Uncle or Pearson.

The reverend is nowhere to be found--which never bodes well, and which Arthur tries very much to ignore, hoping that Swanson's calamitous nature won't _become_ his problem, as he knows it inevitably will.

But there are also _some_ around who are good company, good to stave off the sharper edge of boredom. The ladies, when they're not being harassed into work by Mrs. Grimshaw-- who Arthur loves like a mother, even if he is also _truly_ terrified by her, she is _not_ a woman one should ever cross, and so he doesn't dare suggest that perhaps they don't deserve quite so much ire as she directs on them. She'll chase him away with a broom -- sometimes literally-- if he lingers too close to them for too long, either mistaking the nature of his interest in their company, or just because he's being a distraction and a 'damn nuisance'. Lenny is fun, to talk with or for a round of five-finger fillet. Lenny is _far_ too smart for his own good, actually, can talk circles around Arthur and is nonetheless inexplicably keen to learn all the tricks of the outlaw life, even though the kid probably _could_ be a lawyer like his daddy wanted him to. (Arthur had accepted Lenny immediately, when he'd joined the gang, warmly embracing him as a brother-- Arthur always likes the clever ones, even though he lacks those skills himself.) Hosea, too, counts as good company-- if company far more used to Arthur's bullshit, and thus far less willing to tolerate his post-injury moping for long periods of time. Hosea is as likely to send him on his way, to tell him to go do a shift of guard-duty if he's feeling so obnoxiously restless, which Arthur is always happy to do-- it's not the same as being out of camp, nothing close to as good as riding, but it's better than nothing.

Arthur spends one truly relaxing afternoon with Jack, taking mercy on Abigail and her attempts to juggle her own hunger and exhaustion with the need to mother and educate her son. He's no good for the former, but he swoops in after hearing Abigail implore the child, for the third time, if he'd _please_ just read _a little bit_ more. Jack is plenty enthusiastic about spending some time showing off his reading skills to his favorite Uncle Arthur for the novelty alone, and Arthur is happy enough to spend that time dozing in the grass and staring up at the sky, keeping himself aware enough of the boy's slow and careful annunciation to ask occasional question of the story, or to help Jack with a word or pronunciation the boy doesn't know. (He's also spiteful enough to box John out of that excellent spot on the ridgeline with the man's own son, because John _avoids_ Jack like a plague, but that's a specific joy that Arthur gets to keep to himself.) Jack can only maintain focus on reading for about an hour before getting bored, but Arthur's in no particular hurry to get up, now that he's finally relaxed, so he and his nephew spend the rest of the afternoon naming shapes they see in the clouds, and-- in Arthur's case-- getting covered in flowers and grass that Jack carefully picks, investigates, and occasionally braids, all the while listening to Jack tell him fanciful stories that Arthur can only sort-of follow.

(To think, he almost could've had something like this, and he'd been too scared of what it meant to realize its worth before it was gone.)

Charles never chases him off, seems to welcome Arthur's bored presence, whether or not Arthur talks or sits in silence or tries to read (he's perfectly _capable,_ but he never reads for pleasure; he's never been able to maintain the focus required, feels the need to get up and pace every few words, mind sliding off anything but the newspaper accounts of _Dutch's Boys_ like water from oil). Arthur is very careful not to hover, not to exhaust his welcome around Charles, for all Charles never objects to his company. Charles is comforting in a way that few people are-- even Hosea, whose presence has always been something reliable and solid against which Arthur could moor his own chaotic nature. Charles is solid too, but differently, warm and comfortable and reliable and _good._ It's the stability of a brother-in-arms, the kind of man you know you can sleep safely around, who will protect you as fervently as he would protect himself or his kin, friend and more-than-friend in the way of people who regularly leap into situations of lethal violence together.

But it's more than that, too-- Arthur's not in the habit of lying to himself (well, he _is,_ but mostly by omission, and not about things like this-- at least, not about sex). He doesn't really have a type, per se, or even an exclusive gender preference-- he _prefers_ men, but that's more of a trend than a rule-- but Charles hits _all_ of his buttons, from the confidence with which the younger man occupies his own space to the low warmth of his voice to the way he always seems _just slightly surprised_ to hear himself laugh, whenever Arthur can coax it out of him.

Arthur basks in Charles's presence for reasons beyond their mutual (and unfortunate) affinity for gunfire, and he knows it: he wants Charles, has wanted Charles since they got to know each other outside Blackwater, and has only been slightly surprised to note that the desire has increased with time and further knowledge, rather than fading. Arthur's also not typically the type to sit on his hands-- if Arthur Morgan wants something, he usually tries to make a play for it, because he's a outlaw and that's what they do, and because he's an outlaw who was raised by Dutch and Hosea back when they two still tended to fall into bed together regularly-- he is awkward for many reasons, when it comes to romance, and he is ashamed of a great many features of his life, but his _preferences_ have never been the cause for either of those things.

There are two things, however, that Arthur _doesn't_ know, and that thus hold him back from action-- or three things, technically, but he feels pretty good about his chances in coaxing Charles to bed with him, if he really wants to try. A few months ago, he'd've done exactly that, and left things there. But now he knows Charles better, and now he isn't sure quite sure _exactly_ what the nature of his want towards Charles is anymore-- that's one of those things about which he _does_ tend to carefully avoid thinking about, and would happily continue avoiding, but for how distressing he finds the thought of possibly losing this comfortable and wordless understanding between them. _That's_ the other thing he doesn't know: if it's worth it, to lose everything that already exists between them, in order to have Charles the way Arthur _wants_ him?

No, he thinks, as he lets Charles show him how to fletch arrows, helping the other man prepare ammunition for a weapon that Arthur doesn't use and is currently more than a little sour about. No, it is not worth risking this good thing between them, for as excellent as the sex would probably be. Arthur has so few good things, and he knows about how dangerous and fleeting this life of theirs is-- he's not gonna jettison _this_ good thing because he's curious about how good the sex would be. What they currently have-- Arthur cherishes it, and he'll make due with it, because it _should_ be enough for him (he should be grateful for _anything_ that Charles offers him); Arthur will content himself with an additional layer of significance to their closeness and the occasional hand on the shoulder, with only imagining more in the privacy of dreams.

Arthur gives Dutch a wide berth-- not so much avoiding him (that feels too much like still being the child they'd found, angry and hissing like a frightened cat, at the tender age of 14, instead of a hardened outlaw in his late 30s) but nevertheless taking the paths around their small camp that don't necessarily bring him in view of their leader's tent. He takes particular care to do this whenever Hosea and Molly are looking stormy-- likely an indication that they'll have been going after Dutch, often voicing legitimate concerns. Those are the days where Dutch's pleasantness breaks, where he broods darkly in the shade of a lean-to at the side of the tent he shares with Molly (Molly herself often sitting unhappily on their bed, dressed up in fancy colorful skirts inside the relatively luxurious interior of the tent proper, looking for all the world like a fancy bird in a gilded cage, and about as happy to be there), or where Dutch sits at the table in the center of camp and murmurs in dark undertone to Hosea (who looks sad and wanting and frail and tired and worried and like he badly wishes Bessie were still alive or he were still lost at the bottom of a bottle), or where Dutch emerges and addresses the camp with shouts about how they needed to work and find money, so much money, that if they got _enough money_ he'd lead them to safety.

But those stormy periods are relatively rare, and most days Dutch is happy to read, happy to nod pleasantly to the ladies, happy to listen to the concerns of his family and give them advice, happy to warmly address Jack like a grandfather, happy to talk to Hosea and Lenny about their reading, happy to hold court and indulge the camp's attention, sympathize with their needs and fears and hunger. This is Dutch in his element as king: Follow him, and he'd keep them all safe.

And he has before-- that's the thing, Dutch _always_ has before-- Arthur _knows,_ becuase he's been at the man's side for 20 years. Arthur is the _only_ one, in fact, who has been at Dutch's side for the entirety of those 20 years-- John left, and even Hosea left for a time, but Arther never wavered, not for Isaac and Eliza or for Mary. Dutch will see them through-- Arthur _does_ keep that faith, for all that Dutch mistakes his questioning for doubt. It's _why_ he questions. And it's why he takes the long way around Dutch's tent, even when Dutch is feeling magnanimous-- because he knows himself, and he knows he wouldn't keep his own damn mouth shut, and maybe Dutch deserves to have some time where all the camp's worries aren't placed so heavily on his shoulders.

Realistically, Arthur is only stuck in camp the length of time required for his wound to heal enough to tolerate the literal pressures of a saddle, but it feels so much longer than that, lagging with all of Arthur's restless impatience. He is thrilled when Strauss confirms the stability of the scar tissue-- a condition enforced by Hosea, who is still the father figure Arthur would never dare disobey, at least in matters of health and home-- thrilled enough to wave off Strauss's additional creepy little request that he go distribute some beatings to-- how had the old man put it-- "encourage compliance with the terms of the loans" with relatively good cheer.

But that cheer is ephemeral, becuase today is one of the tense days, the days where everybody's too hungry and foul and snappish with each other-- everyone except Micah, who is squirming around camp like the little snake he is, oily and venomous and more dangerous than he looks. Arthur hears him talking to Dutch as he walks away from Strauss, pausing behind the shuttered cloth of the big tent's far wall. Their voices are quiet, muffled-- but from distance, not from the attempt to whisper, and even from here Arthur can _taste_ the falsity in Micah's tones.

He asks what Dutch is reading, obsequies. Dutch is interested, happy to be asked, but that's normal: Evelyn Miller, he answers. Arthur tries to remember if he's ever read Evelyn Miller-- the name sounds familiar, one of the books he'd tried to borrow from Hosea and read in Charles' presence over these past several days, probably. He'd spent far more time thinking about Charles than Miller's ideas-- but between those long moments of pining, he remembers hints of prose, of descriptions of the American west and its sublime terribleness that struck him as fairly apt, if you liked that kind of thing. And Dutch and Hosea, they _really_ liked that sort of thing, it was some of what had originally brought them together, as friends and outlaws and lovers.

Micah plays his hand badly, then, calls Miller an old windbag-- which, of course, Dutch does not let stand. But this is magnanimous Dutch, who thinks of himself as the patriarch, who needs to educate these boys of his in the ways of the world and the finer points of philosophy and culture. He responds to Micah with patience, waxing about the author's brilliance as if to teach Micah something, which is truly an impossible task.

If Arthur had walked away then, his good mood might've been preserved-- but he doesn't, he continues to stand, and something inside him curdles _deep_ when he _hears_ Micah lay that syrupy charm on thick, his voice heavy and dripping with cloying obsequiousness, with fake emotion and sincerity. It makes him angry just to hear it, and so obviously, inelegantly done. Dutch just has such a _profound_ way of explaining things, Micah says, with earnestness so overwrought it can only be hollow. Micah feels _so_ grateful to be exposed to this wisdom, and unworthy in his simplicity. Arthur won't deny that Micah's unworthy, but it strikes him like a blow to hear the genuine flattery in Dutch's response-- like he doesn't know (or doesn't care) that Micah is telling him only what he wants to hear, as he affects humility in the denial of any kind of genius. It's Evelyn Miller, Dutch insists, who's the _real_ genius here, apparently forgetting that Micah had called him a windbag seconds before--

A small, poisonous part of Arthur simmers with rage, wants to say that Dutch certainly is right about being anything but a smart man, if he's going to _believe_ such obvious bullshit from Micah. He _doesn't_ voice those thoughts, but Arthur can't stop himself from scowling powerfully and hunching forward on himself, stalking around the tent looking as furious as he feels. He shoots the two of them a disgusted look, earning confusion from Dutch and a snarl from Micah.

Micah excuses himself from Dutch a second later, and Arthur-- never quite the best with impulse control-- can't help but stalk after him, wearing a twisted expression that's almost a returning snarl, spitting some caustic phrases that Arthur can't quite remember specifically at Micah like they're knives. It was nothing that would've indicated that Arthur had been eavesdropping, and Dutch knows full well that Arthur has a strong dislike of the other man, but that hadn't stopped Dutch from watching their interaction darkly from the entrance of his tent, lost in interpretations of his own.

A result of that fury come to bite him later that day, during the evening, when the sky is shifting from a glorious sea of oranges and reds to the deep blue-black of night above Horseshoe Overlook. He's walking away from the table at the camp's center, where he'd been sitting with Charles-- his _intention_ is to go to bed; Hosea'd gotten wind that Trelawney was in town and needed use of Arthur's skill with a pen, and so Arthur's eager to get an early start towards Valentine in the morning. The words take him by surprise, emerging unbidden from the darkness, sharp as only knives from the hands of family can be: Dutch, shadowed in that lean-to, speaking as darkly as if he's reciting some kind of biblical prophecy. "I expect it'll be you who betrays me in the end, Arthur, you're the type."

For a second, Arthur isn't sure he's heard that correctly-- that it's Dutch's voice doing the talking, saying the words that are already traitorously uncurling in his chest. These long days past, this period of agonizing healing, Arthur's been _keeping a respectful distance_ from Dutch, taking care not to antagonize the man and not to respond too poorly to the occasional bouts of bad temper his surrogate father evinces, but this-- this is something different, and he can't just _walk away_ from this. Arthur has been by Dutch's side for _twenty years_ , the _only one_ who's never wavered. He rounds on Dutch immediately, his voice snapping taut, crackling with disbelief that has not quite yet begun to turn to outrage. "What is that even supposed to mean, Dutch?" Arthur asks, incredulous, shoulders tense and uncomfortable. Arthur can feel Charles' eyes on him, feel Charles that small distance away like the man's presence is a physical thing, and for once Arthur isn't sure he likes that-- isn't sure he wants Charles to see this interaction, this moment where a stray word from his _father_ has flayed him so bare so quickly. Arthur isn't sure he _wants_ to be comforted and calmed from this, not right away/

Dutch seems to realize he's crossed a line-- he demures, sounding honestly surprised, as if either Arthur's pain or Dutch's own words have made him wake from some fugue that had possessed him. He nearly says as much, apologizing immediately- "I'm sorry- I'm- I'm a little tired, I think. Haven't been sleeping well-"

Neither of them can see each other's faces, which is probably just as well, but Arthur feels Dutch shrink back slightly, retracting into the shadows under his awning. Arthur cuts off his excuses, shaking his head with his chin pulled partially to his chest, letting his slightly-too-long hair stray in front of his face. It's an automatic gesture, and even he isn't sure what it means. "That's a strange thing to say." he says, drawling the word strange, bitter and unimpressed. He doesn't wait for a further response-- doesn't look over at Charles, who Arthur is quite certain won't close the distance between them with Dutch present, no matter how much the other man might want to-- Arthur shakes his head again and turns on his heel, stalking over to the comfortable privacy of his own tent, his own bed.

Those words stay with him, sharp as they bounce through his mind, drawing more blood from their points as he stews on them. Sleep won't come for him now, no matter how hard he tries, no matter how hard he wants it.

*!*

It's not that Arthur's a stranger to this kind of pain, to being hurt by a father-- Dutch and Hosea are _not_ the first fathers he's had, just the first good ones. Other men might've had the excuse of drink or poverty, but though Lyle Morgan had plenty of history with both of those, he was mostly just a plain _mean_ bastard. Lyle had _liked_ violence, he'd liked to cause fear, liked to do inspire it both in the people he robbed and his own family. Arthur remains surprised to this day that it was an illness that took his mother, and not his father's fists-- that Arthur himself survived to the age of 14.

Arthur doesn't like to think of Lyle-- he's firmly convinced that the best action that man ever took was swinging from the end of a rope, something that Arthur took feral pleasure in watching-- but memories of Lyle nonetheless follow Dutch's words through his mind, disjointed and hazy and disconnected as he's only ever experienced in memories of trauma, and excruciatingly clear for all of that. He remembers fists, beatings. He remembers trying to defend his mother when he was small, of being bodily picked up and thrown down the stairs. He remembers plates and cups thrown at him, remembers Lyle's thick hands around his neck-- Lyle'd only needed one hand, he'd been so small-- tight and squeezing and painful. It's a visceral memory, he can almost feel the way his throat was constricted, feel how much it had hurt to gasp for air, how certain he'd been that he was going to die in that hand, every single time. He remembers the regularity of these beatings, the way he could never tell what'd set them off, the way he came to expect them with a cynicism that should've been alien to a child of his age at the time. He remembers that the intensity and frequency of these beatings had only begun to diminish when Arthur was finally capable of speaking in the one way that Lyle could actually understand: in violent, brutal rage. He'd started to hit back, to counter Lyle's blows with his own, to wrap his own hands-- getting bigger every day-- around Lyle's neck and squeeze, to throw plates and worse right back.

Lyle swung not long after that-- probably good, becuase the way they'd been going, one of them would've ended up dead regardless-- and Arthur had closed that chapter of his life in favor of one much better, one that he characterizes by the presence of _real_ family, of Hosea and Dutch and then John. Arthur wants his keep his early childhood behind him, where it usually is, forgotten and far away; often he manages-- but he'd be lying if he said he hadn't learned to enjoy violence then, if there hadn't been an element of pride at his own strength whenever he successfully fended off one of Lyle's attacks, as if part of him hadn't been hoping it'd be him and not a sheriff to end that father's life.

Arthur rarely acknowledges-- can honestly neither feel nor characterize-- what Lyle did to him as painful, as having an impact on him in any way other than as preparation for the brutality of the life he currently leads. The blows were physically painful, and the daily terror-- the banality of it's certainty-- had been unbearable, but Lyle had ceased to be a father to him long before his mother's death, had only ever been an awful force of nature that a very young Arthur had tried desperately to avoid. There'd never been an emotional connection to injure or sever, there'd never been a relationship to betray, not really. Those words Dutch had said to him earlier that night, they should've been so much _less_ than anything Lyle had done ever to him, they should've been relatively easy to endure and dismiss in the light of all the things Arthur had already survived. Dutch isn't even really-- _technically--_ his father. And yet, despite that, here he is, reeling from a blow so unintentional that it'd taken even its speaker by surprise. Somehow, for as backwards the logic feels to him, Arthur hurts more deeply from Dutch's words than anything he'd experienced at his blood-father's hands.

It is not a realization that sits comfortably with him; combined with rarely-active memories, rest is not on the horizon for him tonight.

~!~

Arthur does try to chase sleep for an hour or two, but in the end, he gives it up as a lost cause-- spends a few more hours sitting in his cot with his journal, drawing by the light of mostly-shuttered lantern, waiting for the sounds of camp around him to shift from singing to snoring. He doesn't feel particularly keen on company, and people _do_ pay attention to him, thanks to his position within the gang hierarchy-- if he were to get up and find a dark corner in which to brood at this time of night, someone would try to cajole him into company around the fire, and he'd rather spend time with himself, figure out how to smooth down his own feathers after they've been so ruffled by memories so old they almost feel like they belong to someone else.

Arthur _isn't_ a sneakthief, that's not really his role as a criminal, but any outlaw worth his salt knows how to walk quietly-- he puts these skills to good use when he _does_ finally emerge from his tent, knowing how lightly most people in their line of work tend to sleep. His intention is to go over to that spot John likes, spend some time looking out over the sleeping heartlands and the big dark starry sky that covers them like a blanket, to let the peacefulness of open space soften the sharp edges of his thoughts. He expects to be alone, that the only people up at this hour will be those on guard at the edges of camp. He _doesn't_ expect to hear a low voice around the post Keiran's been tied to-- somewhere he's been avoiding generally, because though he doesn't like having the O'driscoll around, the way the other men go after their bound captive makes him uncomfortable, and he'd really prefer not to have to think about that too much either. But there's always a chance that the O'driscoll is planning something, that someone's come to break him out-- Arthur alters his course, wandering towards the post with narrowed eyes, shuttering his lantern completely so as to not announce his presence.

He is surprised to see Charles, of all people, patiently holding a tin cup of water to the boy's lips, tipping it up very deliberately in short increments, to prevent the boy from drinking as much as he'd clearly like. The voice had been Kieran's, both whining for more water and thanking Mr. Smith for his mercifulness. Arthur scowls deeply, and it's only the hour that prevents him from prowling over, all raised hackles and unhappiness; he'd figured that _someone_ was feeding and watering Kieran, else the boy'd've died by now, but he assumed it was one of the ladies, or else Mrs. Grimshaw under Dutch's private instructions, to keep him alive long enough to start talking. It stung to see that it was Charles doing this job-- Arthur knew that this was mercy, he wasn't so far gone that the shape of such a thing was alien to him, but that didn't entirely prevent this from feeling like a small betrayal.

Charles sees him coming, doesn't stop or flee or look guilty or ashamed-- he merely looks up, meets Arthur's eyes by the light of his own half-shuttered lantern, expression impassive and hard to read. Arthur forgets, sometimes, how opaque Charles can be, how the others find Charles so extremely hard to read-- he only remembers at times like this, when Charles affects that opacity deliberately, denying Arthur access he should know better than to expect unconditionally. They're close, they've become good friends quite quickly, but that's no reason his friend's openness for granted; he should know better.

But Arthur doesn't continue on his way, doesn't move until Charles steps away from Keiran, the cup in his hands empty. Keiran whines, sounding more like a dog than a human-- a sound that wants to put words to the request for just a little more water, a little more kindness, but knows better than to try. Charles frowns at him, shakes his head once; he's done this task, this secret chore on top of the so many others Charles has wordlessly adopted for the camp's wellbeing. Charles turns his frown on Arthur, then, a slight tilt to his head, a question-- Arthur hunches his shoulders and continues on his way, towards that stump, hoping both that Charles _will_ follow and also that Charles will dismiss their interaction and wander off to bed.

Charles, of course, follows him; Arthur pretends not to be relieved, that even the quiet knowledge that Charles is at his back doesn't soothe that everpresent buzz in his head, the slight overstimulation of all of his senses that he assumes is a product of being cooped up so long around so many people, unable to range like he wants to. Arthur takes the stump, as planned, unshuttering his lantern and producing his journal and pencil stub from his satchel. Charles settles side him on the ground, sitting loosely with legs crossed and one arm behind him, as he stares out over the sleeping heartlands.

Sitting here in silence together-- that would be good, that would be _healthy, so_ of course Arthur breaks the silence, voice low enough not to wake the camp as he growls, "Why're you watering the O'driscoll. Don't you have better things to do, like sleeping?" His voice is more sullen than threatening, growling or not.

Whatever answer Arthur's expecting-- probably something about how one can't wring information from a dead man-- it's not the one Charles gives. "Just got off guard rotation," the younger man answers with a shrug and a sidelong glance, nonchalant. He takes slightly longer to answer the more important question, weighing his words carefully; Arthur almost assumes he doesn't _intend_ to answer, intends to let the actions speak for themselves, when he says "You can't win the loyalty of a dog you only kick. And if you do, you don't deserve it."

Arthur doesn't like this answer; he scowls again, drawing into himself. "He's an _O'Driscoll_ , he don't know shit about loyalty, they ain't capable of it. We shoulda just killed him." They _should've_ stayed away from Colm's camp up in the Grizzlies, too, but here they were, and they'd robbed that damn train, and acquired an extra body who couldn't contribute but who they dare not cut free. "We untie him and he'll go running right back to Colm and his kind, tail between his legs." Arthur isn't sure he actually believes these words-- they're just sourness, and more about the entire situation up in Colter than necessarily about Kieran himself; looks can be deceiving, but Keiran certainly doesn't seem like he's capable of much that's vile, and Arthur considers himself a relatively good judge of character, capable of making these kinds of determinations. Nevertheless, the boy had somehow fallen in with the O'driscolls, and _wasn't trustworthy_ for all that.

Charles shoots him a look that can only be described as 'profoundly unimpressed.' "He's not an O'driscoll." Charles says flatly, sounding more exhausted than can be explained by the late hour, like this is a refrain he's heard already for months, not days, and it's an argument that he is _thoroughly_ tired of. "Think about it, Arthur. That gang, the way it runs? They'd've chewed him up--cut his head off." Charles shudders, eyes half closed-- like that's something he can imagine, instead a figure of speech-- shakes his head to clear it. His expression is still discomfited when he opens his eyes, which makes Arthur uneasy too, like there's a threat coming from a direction he can't see and thus can't defend against. "We might need him, Arthur." Charles says seriously, low and sincere. "We certainly need his information. There's no harm in showing him some some kindness." Charles shrugs uncomfortably, unease in the short roll of his shoulders a match for Arthur's own, his voice reproachful. "And keeping him barely alive is hardly a kindness, anyway."

Arthur grumbles a wordless answer, a noise of dissatisfied assent-- because that's true, humans die of thirst faster than they die of hunger, and the rare cup of water that extends Kieran's life attached to a post in an enemy camp can hardly be called generous. "Just-- Just don't let the others see you." is the only answer Arthur actually gives, turning back to his sketch for a moment. It's a rough from memory, a few jagged lines forming the shape of a grazing horse, not yet specific enough to be any horse he knows by name. He fusses over the drawing a little more, then turns the page, starts to block in the form of a man with quick, automatic strokes. The silence carries between them, a little more comfortable than before, Arthur grounding himself in the sensory world: the the rhythmic scratch of pencil against paper and the regularity of Charles' breathing beside him.

Charles breaks the silence next; Arthur knows he's going to, from the way the younger man shifts slightly, gives him a long look, his breathing slightly deeper as he considers his words. Whatever he says is going to be uncomfortable, Arthur knows, because he recognizes that kind of pause, can compare it against how careful Charles is with his words _all the time._ He's not wrong: "I heard what Dutch said to you, earlier. You okay?"

Arthur's pencil doesn't pause, mid-drawing, and he's proud of that, for all that the question does make him set his jaw uncomfortably. "Fine," he says initially, which they both know is a lie and which earns him _that look_ from Charles again, the one that calls him on his bullshit without requiring a single spoken word. "It'll _be_ fine," Arthur amends, with a wave of his hand. "We just never do well when we have to live in each other's pockets. Never have. Dutch always gets touchy like that, especially with the food situation in camp and the law and the O'driscolls so close. But I'll ride to Valentine tomorrow and scratch up some work and it'll all be fine again." He keeps his voice calm and confident, but can't help the edge of weariness that creeps in, the concern that things are different this time, that this streak of bad luck is holding longer than it should be, that all the times before didn't include the presence of _Micah fucking Bell (_ who, thankfully, had ridden off with Lenny earlier that evening, heading off towards the town of Strawberry to see if more prospects might be scrounged up there, allowing for a temporary reprieve from his awful presence).

Charles doesn't look convinced by his answer-- that he knows there's more bothering Arthur, but doesn't want to ask, respectful of the older outlaw's boundaries; Charles lets it stand, humming a partial confirmation, and offers his company as a gesture of quiet support instead. If Arthur wants to speak more, he can, that's welcome-- but so is their companionable silence, if Arthur does not.

And Arthur _does want,_ but it's not that simple-- very little he wants with both body and soul is ever simple. The peace of the night is doing what he'd hoped, smoothing his feathers down, easing the sting of both Dutch's words and the memories-- but there's more than sting there, and the depth to which those words had cut is still keenly painful. He wants to tell Charles about that, about how it feels so different from his blood-father's actions, how unjust it feels that Dutch's words should hurt him so much worse. But he is 36, an adult man, and the nature of these wounds makes him feel small and vulnerable again, and _deeply ashamed_ of that vulnerability.

*!*

And anyway, to talk about Lyle-- well. Charles is honorable, a _good man,_ Arthur knows this from experience, from the jobs they pulled together in Blackwater and from when they were laying the groundwork for he and Hosea's abandoned real estate scheme. That honorableness seems to come so naturally to him, and Arthur must try _so hard_ to achieve but a shadow of it-- and that's because of Lyle, becuase he's still Lyle's son, it's Lyle's blood in his veins, Lyle who made him, Lyle who taught him how to fight like his life depended on it. When he thinks of Lyle now-- the man who _is_ still technically his technical father, the one by blood, whether or not he deserves the title-- all Arthur can feel is a fierce, bitter, angry, festering pride, a pride that feels as poisonous as the wound on his thigh did days ago: pride at having survived, pride at having swung back, pride for every fight he won, pride in the moment the platform dropped out from underneath Lyle and that rope snapped tight around his neck. Arthur feels pride, and he remembers fierce joy in some of that violence, in surviving, in finally beating back through dint of his own strength and power a man who had terrorized his mother and himself literally as long as he can remember. The last is a feeling he recognizes-- its cousin rears its head whenever Arthur fights with fists or bullets, whenever he engages and survives another battle, whenever it's his might and his strength that cuts a path through a hostile world: battle joy, a euphoria that only soldiers and outlaws know, that they rarely admit to but for in the company of each other, whose other face is terror. Lyle taught him that, Lyle is the first place he felt that, and he's pretty sure that means that he's not a good man-- that he'll never be a good man, not the way Charles is so naturally.

There's a part of him that likes killing, that likes inspiring fear. He doesn't like that part of him, tries to chase it away because he understands, logically, that such actions tend to increase the risk to his family, particularly under the increasing scrutiny and scope of the law-- but nevertheless, he knows that part of himself is there. The part of himself like Lyle. And perhaps that's why he hates Micah so much-- becuase they're less dissimilar than Arthur wishes, because Arthur is pretty sure that it's only his own tenuous, fragile self-control standing between himself and that indignity. (Indignity is too soft a word-- but to name it more accurately would be to admit its power, to admit his own fear-- that his tenuous strength will not hold indefinitely, that one day he _will_ cross that line, will become his own father and Micah, will render himself unrecognizable in pursuit of mindless violence and fear. He can feel that temptation, sometimes, and he hates it, and he fears it, and he tries to avoid it, just like he tries to avoid all the memories of Lyle- becuase this happens, he thinks of all of of these thoughts and _can't stop_ , and only alcohol and sex or some other good _strong_ distraction can clear them from his mind.

Thank anything holy that its Trelawney he's going to see in Valentine tomorrow.

Thank the same holy entity that his self control is currently strong enough _not_ to use Charles for that kind of distraction, to cheapen the strength of their friendship by touching him in an attempt to chase away desperate pain.)

~!~

Through all of this internal tumult, Arthur draws-- the blocked out shape of the man builds itself, in short gentle strokes, into Charles, sitting beside him, eyes half-closed and drooping as he dozes sitting up. It _is_ very late, Arthur thinks, as he puts the final touches on the lay of Charles's hair; Arthur won't sleep, but there's no reason for Charles to join him in insomnia.

Arthur closes his journal and leans over, gently nudging his friend in the shoulder. "Hey," he say, softly, getting Charles' attention. "You're gonna be sore in the morning if you sleep like that."

Charles opens his eyes, having been dozing lightly enough to not quite cross into anything that truly qualifies as sleep, rolls his shoulders to loosen them against the tightness already settling in there, wincing at the stiffness of his injury. "Sunrise is in two hours," he answers, through a yawn, and then shrugs, "And I've slept in worse positions. But you're right, I should lay down for a bit." He starts to get to his feet, hesitates, looking at Arthur. "Are you alright, though?" He'll stay here, if Arthur needs, doesn't mind being company. It makes Arthur feel warm.

"I'll be fine." Arthur answers, and he will be.

Charles nods, looking him measuringly in the eye, and puts a hand to his shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. "You want company to Valentine this morning?" he asks.

Arthur scowls lightly, getting ready to puff himself up in a far more familiar fashion than he's done at any other point in this night of withdrawn brooding: "Your shoulder--" he starts.

Charles raises an eyebrow at him, cutting him off with only _the look._ "Your thigh." he counters, both serious and teasing, and adds, "the wound is closed, and it's not on a limb I use for riding." He doesn't remove the hand from Arthur's shoulder.

Arthur waves, trying to scowl while the edges of his mouth betray him and sneak upwards slightly, "Yeah, alright. IF you're awake when I ride out."

Charles finally removes his hand with a pat, giving Arthur that warm slow smile that Arthur adores, "See you in two hours." he affirms, and then wanders over to the lean-to he shares with Javier and Hosea, to catch two hours of horizontal napping.

Arthur stays where he is, lets himself relax into the soothing sounds of the waning night-- once more attuning himself to the sound of Charles' breathing, now farther away, and now beside the sound of Hosea's breathing, and the reminder that still has people who are are not Lyle, and that he can use their presence as support, as he weathers the iterative waves of that come both from having thoughts of Lyle brought back into his mind, and the the pain of Dutch's words that brought those memories back to him, words he still finds bewildering and strange.

He'll be alright. He always is, and he's got good people to rely on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The specific abuse mentioned in this chapter was experienced by Arthur at the hands of his dad. Arthur has not internalized it in particularly healthy ways, which is part of why this chapter is flagged the way it is.
> 
> There are two canonical encounters in this chapter:
> 
> \- Arthur overhearing Micah buttring Dutch up (which in my game was overheard but for which you can find videos where Arthur is included in the conversation posted online; canonically this happens earlier in the timeline.)
> 
> \- Dutch telling Arthur he thinks that Arthur will betray him in the end (though canonically this interaction happens during the day.)
> 
> Most of the dialogue in those scenes is lifted/lightly modified from the actual interactions.
> 
> Summary:
> 
> This chapter features a lot of Introspective Arthur, who has to hang around camp because he's too injured to ride around and go on adventures, like he'd like to. We find out that he injured himself in Colter-- he and Charles couldn't hunt together, as happens in the main game, because Charles' shoulder was injured, but Arthur nevertheless tries to borrow his bow because he knows he won't catch anything with a gun. He wont' let charles come with him, though, becuase charles is injured pretty badly and also becuase Arthur doesn't want to embarass himself in front of Charles. He fucks up stringing the bow, and the point on which you hook the string snapped up and sliced him pretty badly on his inner thigh. Dutch was frustrated by this, because he'd been counting on Arthur for the train job that happens right before they leave Colter, and vents that frustration on Arthur while Charles stitches the injury closed. (our current incarnation of Charles won't remember any of this, though, because he didn't actually live that experience-- Arthur doesn't know this.) Arthur also remembers wading into the river after accidentally losing the wagon wheel on the way to Horseshoe overlook, having done this without thinking because he was worried Charles'd hit his head on the way down (he hadn't).
> 
> Arthur reflects on the people around camp and his relationship with them, because he has to spend a lot of time in camp, and he is Bored. He has some cute fluffy uncle-nephew time with Jack. He is aware that he has a crush on Charles, but has decided that acting on it is a bad idea because he doesn't want to risk losing the friendship for some sex, and he REALLY loves their friendship. Arthur also half-avoids Dutch, because he wants to keep things peaceful and knows he has trouble holding his tongue. Dutch is mostly in a good mood, but there are exceptions to that.
> 
> Arthur overhears Micah sucking up to Dutch (if you skipped the chapter, it may be worth looking up some of these video interactions-- just note that, as written, Arthur does not participate in the interaction between Micah and Dutch.) Dutch tells Arthur that evening, out of the blue, that he thinks Arthur will betray him. Arthur goes to his technically-it's-not-a-room and freaks out because that's one helluva thing to hear your surrogant parent say to you. It triggers some memories of his birth father and the abuse he suffered in childhood, along with a big helping of angst. Arthur can't sleep, tries to go brood in that spot that John Marston lurks in Chapter 2. He runs into Charles giving Keiran some water. This makes Arthur very grumpy. Charles sits with him on the ridgeline, Arthur demands to know why he's watering Keiran, Charles basically answers that they might need Keiran later and that they should make some attempt to earn his loyalty. Charles mentions he heard what Dutch said, asks if Arthur is okay. Arthur says yes, does NOT confide in Charles (but does want to, and thinks more about his dad and his dad's effect on him); eventually, Charles goes to bed after agreeing to ride to Valentine with Arthur in the morning (Hosea has informed Arthur that Trelawney is back in town and needs his help with something.)
> 
> which is basically a very long way to say that Arthur stuck in camp is bored and has to deal with his feelings, which isn't something he likes to do.
> 
> -rubs hands together- and now, having post this most recent behemoth, i am going to treat myself to some of the fics i've been following that updated recently~~
> 
> [I can be found on pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/00101010), which also has a link to a form that can be used to send me prompts.
> 
> Thank you for reading,
> 
> \- BooleanWildcard / * / Asterisk / 42 / 00101010


	4. NOT A CHAPTER, but important

This is not a chapter update; those will resume on my normal not-at-all-a-schedule after this, but this moment is too important to pass unremarked. It's been too important for awhile, but people are currently paying attention. I went back and forth about doing this kind of post, because tbh it feels like an empty gesture-- but I don't feel like I can proceed in good conscience with this unremarked, even without considering that one of my POV characters in this fandom is a biracial black indigenous man who I am writing as queer and (in this and probably other fics) trans. 

With regards to the police killings of George Floyd, Breona Taylor, and Troy McDate-- and the many many more deaths of POC at the hands of police for many years prior to this--

What I _do_ is research, among other things; I read _a lot_ , and one of the most frustrating things about this moment that many folks in social justice work are talking about is how _long_ this has been in coming. There has been so much great scholarship and writing done on the subject of racial violence broadly and the criminalization of blackness in the USA for _decades--_ but it _is_ good to see that these ideas are starting to become more broadly realized, by many different kinds of people.

We have this perception of history that it's a dead thing, something that happened _then_ and that we talk about now, but which otherwise doesn't effect us; one of the things I think a lot about is how false that is, how _alive_ history is. By that, I do not _only_ mean that the telling of history is a little closer to storytelling than most of us would like to admit, even with citations, and that there is no telling of history that does not come unfettered from cultural bias and the limitations of literally what sources are available-- I also mean that the _effects of that history are still active,_ even if they are so far away that there are no longer people alive to remember the specifics of why and how. 

We've got years of scholarship, now, on this topic, so what I'm going to do is link to a bunch of resource lists compiled by some excellent folks online, and then also list some books of my own suggestions. Please do check some of these out, because they are thorough and fabulous introductions to a critically important subject, and extremely important context without which you _cannot_ understand this moment. (IF the idea of jumping right into some of these books is intimidating, then here's a way of easing in: some of the newer titles have authors who have gone on book tour in the era of podcasting, which means that you can often find interviews with the authors on the subjects of or adjacent to their books, which is good for both a soft introduction and additional contextualization.) 

[This twitter thread](https://twitter.com/victoriaalxndr/status/1266829408268095493?s=21&fbclid=IwAR34iEpfyxpkJjVpFAsDRXdUHI7v0PBdjyAfMYq6VIgA5l1e7S3zn4ZqbYU) is a great place to start-- it's been helpfully broken down into sections, including a section for people who are coming to these ideas for the first time. I have read many of these books and can confirm they are excellent, and most of them are also very accessible (in that they're the NOT kind of academic that needs a high level of foreknowledge of other discipline's jargon or theory sets-- you can come at these cold.) These are mostly books, but most of them are available by audiobook, and you can find recorded interviews with many of the contemporary authors. 

[THIS](https://tinyurl.com/antiracistresourceguide.) is an extremely thorough resource guide to antiracism, that includes several different kinds of resources, including some that are good for the more audio-inclined. Both this and the previous are by Victoria Alexander.

[This](https://www.radicalhistoryreview.org/abusablepast/reading-towards-abolition-a-reading-list-on-policing-rebellion-and-the-criminalization-of-blackness/?fbclid=IwAR2uIRH37EyEILfH4VsxTytcSsxOPOu29wQ9JU-StnsJkXthgF8_mAHg1qA) is a reading list compiled specifically in response to the police murders of George Floyd, Breona Taylor, and Troy McDade, with a specific focus on police violence and the criminalization of black folks. 

Please do take the opportunity to read some of these works, and to reflect on it. It's not comfortable. It's not pleasant. But it's important and vitally necessary work.

ADDITIONALLY, I have a few suggestions of my own (some which may overlap with those lists)-- but I think that it's important to note that we deal with a work of historical fiction in this fandom, writing for RDR2 as we do. Like any fiction, grounded in a historical period or not, RDR2 is a work of fantasy, and thus it _isn't_ and also _shouldn't be_ held to the same expectations of research rigor and historical accuracy as I'd want from a history textbooks. That's not what it's for. _However,_ this is a good opportunity to use it to point to the real events of history. RDR2 shows us a very happy, cheerful version of this period in history, relative to actual events of the time.

I believe in bearing witness, and I don't mean that in the bullshit sunlight-is-the-best-disinfectant way-- the events recounted in some of the following books are truly, deeply horrifying. That word cannot do enough to describe how fucking awful a lot of the events and systems recorded in these books are-- there _is_ no word that can sufficiently represent the terror they did/do induce. Some of these books include very explicit descriptions of racial violence. Nevertheless, I think it's _very_ important to read them, especially for americans, **especially for white americans** , and especially for any american that does not get regular exposure to police violence. History is alive, and here are some of the roots roots of what we're experiencing now.

Most of these books come with a VERY STRONG content warning for racial violence, particularly the first six, which deal very explicitly with subjects of lynching and violence. Many of these _are_ academic, so they may not be as accessible as some of the resources in previous lists. 

- _At The Hands Of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America_ , Phillip Dray (public historian)

\- _Slavery At Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage,_ Sowande M Mustakeem

 _\- Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South._ Talitha Leflouria

 _\- White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide,_ Carol Anderson

\- _Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership,_ Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

\- _Dying of Whiteness: How The Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America's Heartland_ , Jonothan M Metzl. 

\- _One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy,_ Carol Anderson

 _-_ _We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy,_ Ta-Nehisi Coates (anthology of essays, many originally published in _The Atlantic_ , with introductuions) 

\- _Black Feminist Thought,_ Patricia Hill Collins 

If you want a treatment of American History more broadly that is frank about these topics, instead of just skipping over it uncomfortably as many history texts do, the [Oxford History of the United States](https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/o/oxford-history-of-the-united-states-ohus/?cc=us&lang=en&) series out of Oxford University Press is pretty good. (I would say that they're not very dry, but I'm also the kind of person who listens to history textbooks for fun so my metric there may not be the best.)

I also suggest reading articles and Essays by Ida B Wells-Barnett and W.E.B. Du Bois, particularly for primary source context WRT the time period covered by RDR2. 

Black Lives Matter. 

Regular updates will resume shortly, but this is Important.

\- 42; 06/05/2020


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The event that I'm writing this for (see also: that i used as the excuse to let this plot bunny out of its cage) went on hiatus last week, which threw a bit of a wrench in the perpetual clusterfuck that is my executive function~~ (Not their fault! I'm just not great at handling things that might effect a planned schedule. C:) But, fingers crossed that I've recovered my shit a little and it comes back quickly.
> 
> This is one of the first chapters that ever presented themselves to me, when I started thinking about this fic, which is probably weird, all things considered.
> 
>  **There's explicit sex in this chapter, and it's not with Charles.** There's also some **discussion of/presence of cheating in ways that would be a spoiler for some of the canonical hidden camp dialogue,** which is why I haven't put it in the tags-- I'm not as comfortable spoiling the canonical camp dialogues from the outside, since those are random so you might not get them on every playthrough.  
> I would not characterize the sex as BDSM, either, but there's a biiiit of a kinky vibe to it. Not enough that I'd want to add it to the tags, either, becuase that would probably be false advertising, but enough that it's worth mentioning here. see bottom note  
> More information in the bottom note.
> 
>  **The section with explicit sex is flagged with a *** at its start and a !*** at its end** , and some additional linebreaks, for anyone who wants only the rated M experience.
> 
> If you want to avoid reading a chapter wherein Arthur fucks not-charles , this is mostly a development chapter for Arthur, and you can probably skip it; there's nothing really plot critical in here (and I'm not entirely sure how much I'd claim this fic has a plot at all but that's a more wibbly thing).
> 
> edit: now without fucked up formatting, which is what i get for bouncing my drafts between 3 different programs RIP

When Charles and Arthur ride out, later that morning, camp is deceptively still and serene. Charles looks tired as he saddles Taima– he hadn't been able to get back to sleep, and he's moving silently, his expression flat; barely anyone is awake at this hour, but those that are take one look at Charles's face and move in the other direction, mistaking his flatness for bad temper. Arthur doesn't think it's anger, though– not that he's seen Charles angry with enough regularity to be certain– but there's the wrong kind of creasing to Charles's brows, and too much owlish blinking.

Arthur doesn't feel any better, to be honest, and it's a relief that he doesn't need to summon enough coherence to actually speak so early– Arthur Morgan is a big believer in not requiring complete sentences until _at least_ midmorning. He is looking forward to just _riding_ again, being on horseback and _away from the camp–_ he loves these people, he really does, but everyone needs a bit of distance sometimes; he suspects Charles feels much the same.

And, indeed, once they've passed beyond the informal boundaries of camp and its outskirts, nodding to Javier on watch as they leave, Charles relaxes back in the saddle, losing some of the tension around his shoulders. By unspoken agreement, they slow their horses, letting the animals stretch out their necks and have a bit of rein. This is as good a way to 'wake up' as any peaceful morning, back in camp– all that's missing is coffee, and drinking that on horseback is probably not worth the hassle. Maybe in a flask..

"Do you actually know where Valentine is?" Charles asks at the end of a yawn, looking a little more alert as he squints off into the distance, through the glare of the sun rising beside them.

Arthur shrugs, unconcerned– the other man's tone is curious, not annoyed or sarcastic– and answers, "more or less." He gestures broadly in the direction of 'north,' "Hosea said to follow these trails northways; if nothing else, we'll find the railroad and that'll take us right there, though I reckon it'll be easy enough to figure out from the direction of other folk on the road– Valentine's the only town around here for miles." He shrugs; this is how Arthur Morgan goes through the world– with a bit of direction, ever following the guiding light of Dutch's lodestar, but otherwise loose and rhizomatic, wandering on his own terms. He likes it this way, getting lost for days at a time, no pressing need to be anywhere in particular.

And Charles seems to know that, to appreciate it, offering him an easy smile that warms his core. "I take it your business with Trelawny isn't pressing, then."

Arthur laughs, shakes his head. "Nah. Hosea said he'd be in town off and on– he's got some kinda business around here, doing who-knows-what to any poor bastards who'll believe him. I'm planning to kill time in a saloon until he comes around. Trelawny just wants me for my hands, anyway." It's a joke that comes out easily, one he wouldn't ordinarily think twice about in any other company, for all that it's true in multiple ways– but around Charles, Arthur suddenly feels a flush at the admission, a little flustered and off-balance. Despite the likelihood that some sex _is_ on Trelawny's agenda, and despite Arthur's firm decision not to pursue Charles for fear of wrecking what they already have, he _very much_ wants it to be clear that he's unattached– to Trelawny or to anyone else. "I think he's planning a forgery," Arthur clarifies a little too quickly, gesturing to his satchel and the journal it contains– and missing, in his stumble towards nonchalance, the shrewd glance that Charles shoots him.

But Charles doesn't seem to read much into his statements that Arthur can see; the other man rolls a shoulder in a way that might be a shrug or might just be some lingering soreness from poor sleep, and says, "Well. If there's no rush, do you want to join me for some hunting?"

Arthur snorts, easing back down into the companionable calmness between him and Charles. "That didn't go too well the last time I tried it." he drawls lightly, patting his recently injured leg, the long scar still an angry red-pink underneath his clothing. "And I've never had too much luck hunting with a gun, either."

Charles grins at Arthur, a big open smile that he rarely shows to other people, just a hint of mischief in his eyes. "That doesn't surprise me, with as much noise as you make moving around camp." The source of the mischief is quickly made clear when he pats the back of Taima's saddle, where there are two bows attached– Arthur recognizes the second as one of the projects with which Charles has occupying himself, during their period of enforced rest back at camp, but he'd figured it as a backup or spare– now he narrows his eyes at the second bow, wary of the Charles's plans. "You can have this one-" Charles gestures to the new weapon, "figure you'd do well to learn how to use it without taking yourself out in the process." He smirks, "You're not too old to learn. Probably."

Arthur tries to evoke his stormiest scowl, mustering false indignation, but the effect is ruined by a slight upward quirk to his lips and another amused snort. "If I end up wounding the both of us and getting us stuck up in camp again, don't complain to me," he grouses, trying to stave off the feelings of flustered (and flattered) awkwardness; he's touched that Charles would go to the trouble of making him a bow more properly sized to his body, even if he still really _does not like_ that weapon. Learning's probably still a waste of effort– but, possibly, a fun one.

And he can't deny Charles anything, so of course he agrees to go hunting. They divert course, spurring their horses into a more energetic trot as Charles takes the lead, seeking out a ground appropriate for a novice archer to hunt without injuring anything except, ideally, their intended game.

They spend the rest of the day chasing said game fruitlessly around the beautiful landscape of the heartlands. Arthur's efforts, in his own opinion, are predictably poor: he learns how to string the damn bow without having it snap back at him, how to hold it, how to nock an arrow without dropping it immediately– all painfully basic skills, alien to hands more used to firearms than a weapon whose tension has to be controlled manually. It's exhausting work– no wonder Charles is so well-built, if he spends so much time pulling at this stubborn length of laminated wood and sinew. At the end of the day, the only thing Arthur manages to bag is a tree, embedding a single arrow into its trunk, several feet away from the buck he'd been aiming at– its his only shot of the day that manages to actually hit anything at all; the others all stray into bushes or dirt. (Arthur would be a lot more sour about his lack of success, were it not for Charles' patience and amused indulgence; the man is a good teacher, despite Arthur's own frustration with himself.)

And, then, suddenly, it _is_ the end of the day– the hours slide past them quickly, and by the time Charles readies his own bow to catch them something a little fresher for dinner than the canned food either of them have on hand, it's nearly evening, and far too late to make riding the rest of the way to Valentine worthwhile. Arthur's not complaining, though– it's nice, to be ranging with someone else who clearly enjoys solitude, which is a thought that doesn't seem nearly as contradictory as it probably logically ought to.

Charles manages to catch them dinner– a jackrabbit, which he fells with a bullet instead of an arrow, because (as he patiently explains) the arrow would be excessive and cruel for such small game. The pelt probably won't net them much to sell, but it tastes pretty good, particularly since Charles doesn't actually let Arthur do more than butcher the poor creature ("There's more to cooking than sticking meat in a fire until it turns black, Arthur."). Arthur's offer of the whiskey he keeps in his saddlebag goes over fairly well, though; the bottle's only a quarter full, but it's enough for the nice relaxing edge of a buzz between the two of them, a good accompaniment for a companionable evening.

They are alone out here together, and it feels possible to be truly at ease for the first time in days, possible to momentarily forget all the trouble in Blackwater and Colter, and whatever other Mayhem they invoked unto themselves with that goddamn train job. The peace is fragile– Arthur feels a sense of deep foreboding on the horizon, but he tries to ignore it, tries to tell himself that it's nothing, as it's been so many times in the past– any calm is a rare enough treat for outlaws, and he knows better than to push too hard against its facade, lest it prove its own shallowness.

('rarely', supplies his traitorous brain, 'as it has _rarely_ been so often in the past'– becuase the fact that they've always survived danger by the skin of their teeth is not the same of there having been no danger at all– but he casts that thought away, silencing it with the mantra of 'trust Dutch, he's never steered us wrong before' that he so often uses for that purpose.)

Charles doesn't actually join Arthur in Valentine that next morning– his intention had always been to break away at some point before the town proper, hunting for larger game than rabbits– he has the ability to address the camp's food shortage directly, which cannot be said for the rest of them. Hunting together the day previous had been an impromptu offer, but Arthur _does_ have business in Valentine, and Charles has avoided towns and cities for as long as he's been running with them, so Arthur is neither surprised nor offended. They go their separate ways early in the morning– Arthur only allows himself to watch Taima trot towards the open prairie for few seconds, before turning his own mount in the opposite direction, in the direction of the railroad tracks. Charles'll probably have better luck without him there to scare off the game, anyway, for all that the idea of wandering around the heartlands with only Charles and the horses for company sounds much better than anything waiting for him in town, Trelawny or not.

Becuase they'd broken camp early, just on the edge of dawn– apparently already a late start for the most advantageous hunting– Arthur reaches the town well before the saloons are doing much business. Valentine's a livestock town, so people rise early, but they rise to do _work_ , and they work hard before they allow themselves to play hard; there's relatively little for Arthur to do until noon, but to kill time.

Thankfully, he sees a big building at the end of the main drag with "Blacksmith & Farrier" written on its wooden facade in faded red paint: Arthur's been waffling back and forth about whether or not to claim this horse– a random beast from the camp herd, fine enough and reliable, but nothing spectacular– for his own, but that idea has never really sat right with him– too soon after Boadicea, whose loss he too closely associates with this horse. It's probably why he's never named the gelding– but it's been long enough to honor his darling mare's legacy, and he has some cash that suddenly starts to burn a hole in his pocket as he recognizes the livery stable in the distance– there's no reason _not_ to look, at the very least.

His business finds him with the results of that decision, hitching his old mount (who will be returned shortly to the camp herd) to a post outside the nearest saloon, alongside a fine black-dapple thoroughbred mare with fresh papers. Arthur hears Trelawny before he sees the other man, that flamboyant accent carrying across the narrowing distance between them, announcing him like a herald. (Arthur suspects that the accent is an affectation– it lacks the depth and resonance that speaks of something _truly_ automatic, authentic– but one so deeply entrenched that Trelawny is probably incapable of speaking any other way; it has _become_ authentic, but differently so– the weird syncretic authenticity that is the only recourse for those poor unfortunate souls like themselves, who live out here in the social hinterlands).

"My dear boy!" Trelawny pronounces, and for all that the man is playing at orator, there is very real affection in his voice. "It is _so good_ to see you!" Arthur turns to him, and Trelawny claps him warmly on the shoulder, stepping just slightly into Arthur's space– not so much as to be unseemly in public, but closer than Arthur would normally allow from most who aren't Hosea or Jack or some of the ladies or (recently) Charles. Trelawny's eyes shift to Arthur's new mare, eyebrows raising cheerfully, "Flashy, Arthur!" he says, offering her his hand so that she may sniff it, and rubbing her velvet-soft nose when she finishes lipping the sugar-cube he's produced by means of a magician's trick into his palm. "Who is this lovely lady? She suits your tastes."

Arthur snorts, putting on his own affectation of sourness (as authentic as any other part of him, as authentic as Trelawny's accent). "Flashy?" he repeats, sarcastic, "I only see one peacock here, Trelawny, and it ain't me." But his voice is fond when he looks at the mare, because Arthur is incapable of being angry when he's looking at a horse (or a cat, or a dog), for all he's doing that extended drawl that only comes out when he's annoyed (or pretending to be so)– "I ain't had her for ten minutes and you're already spoiling her. She doesn't even have a name yet."

Trelawny laughs, scratching the mare just in front of her eye, which is apparently an itchy spot, given she leans into the rub of gentle fingers. "Doting on a fine lady isn't 'spoiling' her, Arther, it's the least they deserve." he looks at Arthur sideways, expression flirtatious and sly as he adds, "Not that you'd know that, living the rough cowboy life as you do." It's a movement, in this exchange, that makes plain the direction in which Trelawny intends this business between them to proceed.

The rest of the gang doesn't _trust_ Trelawny, but Arthur– well, 'trust' isn't exactly the right idea, because Arthur has the measure of the man, he genuinely likes Trelawny, and he knows what Trelawny will and will not do. The others tend to think in terms starkly black and white, for all that they are outlaws and thus theoretically exist in a liminal grey space– Trelawny, on the other hand, is a creature of nuance beneath all that garish posing. He doesn't _do_ violence, his body is soft and long and unscarred, he likes things that are comfortable and he likes to live well, and he's as restless a spirit as Arthur is, whether or not he prefers to range in urban environments instead of Arthur's own preference for wilderness. Trelawny won't kill a man, not for loyalty to anyone but his own, and he's as opportunistic as any of them, an inveterate thief and an enthusiastic liar– but he can keep a secret, knows how to gather information, and (most importantly) when and how to dispense that information with _care and discretion._ He's family, as much one of Dutch's boys as any of them are, and Arthur likes to have him around– quite a bit more than he likes some of his brothers-by-choice, as a matter of fact.

This thing between them isn't part of that not-quite-trust, but Arthur enjoys it too, all the same. It's emphatically casual– there was never, and will never be, a world wherein it's anything _but_ casual– but it's warm and familiar, and the sex is good, and Arthur's had enough experience with love and passion to be wary of reaching for either, lest he burn what's most important to him yet again. Informally, by action and implication, they play roles for each other, flavored by caricature instead of their persons: Arthur, rough outlaw, forceful and hard and hungry, to Trelawny's cultured and soft receptiveness, the urban effete masculinity that likes to control the world from richly appointed drawing rooms, sheltered from their own consequences. Neither of them are actually these things, as they are both very well aware, and that makes the game more fun.

"I've been with women." Arthur says lazily, raising an eyebrow, his frown shifting into a half-smirk. "They like cowboys– we know how to work with our hands. Turns out that's appealing. And rare." he gives his mare a final pat, and then leans on the post behind him, looking at Trelawny pointedly, "You have some work for me? _A_ job." Not plural. Intentionally.

His words are not as much of a non-sequitur as they appears to be from the outside– there's a familiar code between them, a request for affirmative verbal consent between people who occasionally go months and years without seeing one another, and who often meet in places both public and hostile to men of their inclinations– but Trelawny reacts as if it were a change of subject, nodding more seriously at Arthur. "Just some forms to sign, dear boy, nothing that should take up too much of your time. They're up in my room– I'm staying at the Hotel across the way, just there." He nods to a tall, white-fronted building across from the stable's yard. "Shall we go take care of them?"

***

And that's how Arthur finds himself, some time later, balanced above Trelawny on a large bed, in a second floor room of the !Saints Hotel, stark naked and hair still damp from the bath.

It's a surprisingly nice bed, and it had been a surprisingly nice bath– like the crisp white paint of its facade, the hotel is trying to position itself as a higher class establishment than a little livestock town with muddy streets could ordinarily boast, for all that it still very much serves the ordinary clientele and operates a brothel. The rooms to either side of Trelawny's are occupied by folks taking full advantage of those latter services; Arthur considers it a positive, given that this removes the requirement of staying discretely silent themselves– something Trelawny has always been notoriously _awful_ at.

Said man is currently making his lack of that specific skill plenty clear; he's pinned beneath Arthur's broader body, one leg braced against Arthur's upper arm, hips canted forwards for Arthur's convenience. His head is tilted back to grant Arthur's mouth easier access to his neck and shoulders, which those shoulders are already decorated with plenty of light red marks from Arthur's teeth. Arthur's greased fingers are inside of him, first two and then three, spreading slightly with each twisting movement, preparing the smaller man for the the cock that's jabbing him in the thigh. Trelawny is securely boxed in by Arthur's limbs, movements more or less restricted by their positions.

It's fast and a little forceful, but Arthur is watching Trelawny with great care, exquisitely aware of every gasp and little movement, the way the man's hands are tight on Arthur's sides, long fingers digging into his scarred muscles. Arthur's attention isn't (only) for his own enjoyment; they've been playing this game with each other long enough to have learned each other's tells and bodies, and Arthur knows that Trelawny likes things a little rough– but there's a big difference between _rough_ and actually doing harm, and Arthur _does not_ hurt his lovers. He takes great pride in that– as much as he enjoys sex physically, most of Arthur's pleasure comes from watching the pleasure his lovers experience, from knowing that it's his hands and his body are that draw the reactions out of them. He know the limits of how fast and impatient he can be, knows to ignore Trelawny's weeping cock to bring out the edge of frustration that makes the other man try to grind against his belly (held just too high for Trelawny to reach), knows how hard to bite at Trelawny's shoulders to get the man to shudder and shout, knows keep his teeth lighter on the neck to earn earn plaintive sounds (and to avoid marks visible above clothing).

Maintaining the careful control necessary for these observations is a little harder today than usual– he's been cooped up in camp for a long long time, subjected to the banal frustration of familial drama for weeks, and spending as much time as possible in the company of a man who he _wants_ desperately, but for something serious and lasting; Arthur can maintain the control necessary to be a good lay, but he's never managed to figure out relationships, doesn't know how to smooth down his own rough edges– the same edges that Trelawny fucks him for, but that prove so much a hinderance to real partnerships.

Thankfully, Trelawny is desperate for this too, and he stretches easily, impatiently bucking his hips against Arthur's hand such as he can while still pinned. It makes Arthur chuckle low in his throat, half a noise of arousal, curling his fingers gently to press against any sensitive spots he can find inside the other man's body. He removes the fingers when he feels how hard Trelawny is, huffs a laughs again at Trelawny's indignant whine, at the way the man shifts his hips to chase after Arthur's hand, as if he can impale himself on anything of Arthur's that's close enough to reach by dint of will alone– in this kind of fever, Trelawny is a creature who knows no patience or self-control or shame. Arthur intends to be accommodating; he braces himself with one hand, pressing down with his bulk slightly to keep Trelawny's hips still and at the right angle, stroking himself to apply fresh grease with the other. He lines up his cock and leans forward, bearing down with his weight as he physically covers Trelawny with his body, teeth applying gentle pressure against the other man's neck; keeping still at this stage is part of the game, and Trelawny _tries_ , whimpering, hands straying up Arthur's shoulders and clenching tightly at his collarbones. He's shaking with the effort, only _partially_ succeeds at stillness, rolling his hips against Arthur again, pushing himself down on Arthur's length once he feels the blunt head of Arthur's cock replace the fingers. Neither of them are going to last long; steady and firm, Arthur presses forward until he's tightly hip to hip against Trelawny, lingering fully inside the other man for a second, catching his breath. (He always forgets how good it feels to be inside someone else, surrounded by and surrounding the radiant heat of a lover's body.) He lifts himself upright, braced on his knees, nipping Trelawny's shoulder on the way up hard enough to leave a mark; much as Trelawny likes to be covered by Arthur's weight, that angle isn't conducive to actually _moving_ without crushing his lover's sack, which is the wrong kind of pain.

Leverge acquired, Arthur holds Trelawny's thighs and drives in against the other man, matching the pace he'd used with his fingers. Part of him wants to close his eyes and pretend this is Charles– but Trelawny is the wrong shape, all angles and limbs where Charles is solid and broad– beautiful, but in different ways. He isn't sure he'd be taking Charles this way, either– Arthur has no idea what Charles would even want, only that he'd like to provide it, whatever it may be. Thus, he resists the urge as best he can, tries to maintain focus on the man who's actually underneath him– but he'd be lying if he said the idea of Charles doesn't make him that much more excited, hard enough to match Trelawny, wanton and bucking back to keep pace with Arthur's demanding thrusts. Like everything else they've done, this is hard and a little rough, just on the right side of too much for Trelawny to take.

"Fuck, Arthur." Trelawny says, sliding his hands down Arthur's shoulders, dragging through sweat and scrabbling insistently against Arthur's biceps, "I can't-" but Arthur's already reacting to the request, wrapping his hands around Trelawny's erection and tugging in a jagged and arhythmic way, out of time with his thrusting. Arthur can feel the other man tighten around his cock, and in a second later Trelawny's a twitching mess of clinging limbs and curses, spilling over Arthur's hand and his own belly. Arthur huffs warm laugh again, always delighted by Trelawny's reactivity, and closes his eyes to grind himself deeply into Trelawny's body those last few times. The hips under his hands are too sharp to match, but he can't quite prevent himself from thinking of Charles as he feels that tightness in the base of his spine, pushing himself over the edge with a couple stuttering thrusts.

He holds his position through the brunt of his orgasm, Trelawny insensate beneath him, for all his arms suddenly fee incapable of holding him upright, shaking slightly as the adrenaline-like rush of arousal and sex leaves him feeling abruptly boneless; only when he's done does he lower himself carefully to the side, trying to avoid smearing cum everywhere– whether or not he ends up sleeping in this bed tonight, Trelawny probably will be, and Arthur's not an inconsiderate lover. He even flails a hand blindly in the direction of the nightstand, grabbing by feel the towel's been discretely waiting there for precisely this purpose, helpfully pulling it onto Trelawny's chest.

!***

Now it's Trelawny's turn to laugh, momentarily drawn back to the present by the unexpected texture of dishtowel on his chest. He cleans himself up quickly, tosses it among the pile of (mostly Arthur's) clothing strewn across the floor, and pulls Arthur's arm up onto his chest to replace it. They lay there for several long minutes, catching their breath, boneless and satiated.

"Whoever you were thinking of is a _very_ lucky man." Trelawny says eventually, voice still a bit breathless. Arthur stiffens, eyes snapping open and face reddening; he wants to say something, to deny it, but going from thoughtless relaxation to a sudden spike of guilt makes his tongue feel thick and unwieldy, the words fleeing his mind even more than they normally do in this kind of situation, unguarded and vulnerable. Trelawny chuckles at him lightly, his expression soothing as he tiredly pats Arthur's bicep, streaked temporarily pink with the marks from his own fingers; the pat turns into a stroke, gently smoothing Arthur's metaphorically ruffled feathers. "I mean that genuinely, dear boy." Trelawny says quickly, trying to ease the spike he hadn't meant to embed in the words– even an infamous silver tongue isn't at their most eloquent post-coitus, apparently. "That was an _especially_ good show." he stretches languidly, looking at Arthur with a supremely smug expression (Trelawny is _always_ smug after sex– he knows how closely Arthur watches to his reactions, how much care Arthur takes to push him as far as his boundaries but no further, and he _loves_ to bask in that kind of attention; it's catnip for such a theatrical conman– but Trelawny seems excessively smug right now, even for all that). "I'm glad to borrow you."

Arthur isn't quite sure what to make of Trelawny's reaction– it's not a trap, but he still doesn't really _want_ to admit that he was thinking of Charles while fucking another man– not to anyone, but definitely not to either of the men in question. He just scowls at Trelawny, deciding that he feels too good and too tired to play at denial, asking "How did you know?" instead.

Trelawny snorts at him, an inelegant complement to the lazy fluidity with which he braces himself up on his elbows, all loose limbs and languid movements, like an elongated housecat. "Arthur, I'm married and I have three children." his voice is droll, half amused and half self-disparaging. (This isn't news to Arthur– he knows about Trelawny's wife and kids, and since the thought makes him slightly uncomfortable, it's one of many things that he handles by Not Thinking About It.) "I know when someone's mind is elsewhere during sex, though admittedly from the other direction." He shrugs, "I've learned to appreciate it."

Arthur is curious despite himself, draping the arm previously across Trelawny's chest over the man's hips instead. "Does she know?" At Trelawny's questioning glance, Arthur flicks his hand around, meaning to gesture broadly to Trelawny and himself, but actually indicating the door. "About this, I mean. What you like." Arthur cringes at his own inelegance– if Trelawny, who can normally charm the scales off a snake, stumbles over his words so fresh from sex, then what Arthur does is dive off a roof.

But Trelawny doesn't get defensive, doesn't take offense, doesn't look anything but dispassionate and perhaps slightly mournful, like he's long ago made peace with this part of himself and its implications. He offers no explanations; he has none, as contradictory as everyone else. Trelawny _adores_ his family, loves his children _and_ his wife, wants their happiness more than any of the treasures he chases, goes to great lengths to insure it and to shield them from all his worst impulses. (The only thing off limits between himself and Arthur is kissing; when Arthur has asked, Trelawny'd told him that such contact was reserved exclusively for his wife, in the same vague dispassionate tone he's using now.)

"I don't know. I like to think she does, but. Probably not." Arthur can't quite characterize the expression Trelawny turns on him, just then– something close to speculative, but far away, with that same mournful edge as his voice. "I want things that she can't give me, but I know her. If I told her, she would try, and it would hurt– what we have. I don't want to lose that– what she and I have." It's honest, stilted, unusually vulnerable, far more than Trelawny would normally permit himself to share; Arthur can certainly sympathize, though he's not entirely sure _why_ Trelawny is revealing this to him– the man does everything for a reason, with a goal in mind, and this is information he guards very carefully. Trelawny looks away, swallowing uncomfortably. "This would hurt her too, so I try to keep it away from her. From them. I don't- I don't want to hurt them." He's silent for a few beats, unusually somber, before shrugging a shoulder to chase the thought away. He doesn't say anything more, just looks at Arthur and quirks a half smile, deliberate and completely opaque.

Arthur's shit with words, especially now, so he he tries to speak without them: he runs the hand still sprawled over Trelawny's hip over the man's long side, pulling him closer, a gesture of physical comfort from a close friend. Trelawny accepts the gesture as it's intended, giving Arthur a wan smile and laying back to bask in the gently fading afterglow.

Arthur _isn't_ quite dozing (but could definitely get there) some time later, when Trelawny breaks the silence again with a different kind of mournful sigh, this one closer to his usual ebullience. "Much as I'd like to do that again," he says, "I have a meeting with a contact in a few hours, and we do need to take care of this other business before I leave." Arthur scowls at him without actually opening his eyes, muttering as does any large animal in the middle of a good rest, but he can't argue with the Trelawny's logic. He rolls away onto his back, allowing Trelawny to detangle himself from Arthur's arms and cross the room.

"I maaaay," Trelawny says, moving to the dresser and opening his case on its surface, shuffling through various papers, "have a lead on the location of our young Sean."

Of all the things for Trelawny to talk about regarding gang business, _that's_ not a name Arthur's expecting to hear in this setting– his eyes snap open and he sits up properly, attention sharpening on Trelawny, becoming the platonic ideal of Dutch's loyal son as naturally if it's a second skin. "That's what I'm going to meet that contact about." Trelawny adds, producing first a sheaf of papers from the case, and then a delicate pen that looks more costly it's reasonably worth– the kind bankers use, of course, and anyone else with more money than sense.

"Is the information solid?" Arthur asks, taking the papers that are handed to him automatically and looking them over. He doesn't need instructions about what Trelawny wants him to do– this is the official side of their regular business. Arthur is a draftsman, an artist whose hand is practiced with delicate movements and whose eyes can capture essential details, and these documents are forged bonds, complete but for the signatures. The documents only need to successfully pass the scrutiny afforded such assets in the average local bank; all are for relatively modest amounts, so much the better to avoid close attention and thus ideal for wide distribution or emergency cash- but there are a great deal of them, and this isn't fast work. Arthur makes a noise of approval at their quality, shoves himself to his feet, and approaches the room's grimy window.

"That's what I'm hoping to find out." Trelawny replies, idly re-dressing without any real rush. "I'll come to camp when I have more solid information. Where are you lot are staying? Provided, of course, you're not sworn to secrecy."

Arthur nods, holds his hand out for a scrap of paper. "Sure. Hosea found the place– Horseshoe overlook." he says, taking the blank scrap that's handed to him. He draws the map quickly, testing the pen as he does, getting a feel for its weight in his hand– the last thing he wants to do is ruin these forged documents with dribbled ink from an unfamiliar tool. "I'm surprised you haven't already weaseled the location from one of us already." The pen works fine; Arthur hands the back to Trelawny, and then produces the key document from the stack of unsigned bonds– the _real_ bond, already signed by a local official whose signature is now going to appear, through Arthur's hands, on all these other blank ones. Arthur holds the key up to the window, placing it low, towards the sill, held sideways so that the signature becomes an abstract shape rather than script with letters he might recognize and stumble over. The blank goes on top of that, registered on the signature lines. This is why Trelawny gets a second floor room when he can– at this location in the window, the paper won't be visible from most viewpoints on the ground, but will still get enough light coming through the glass to make two layers of paper translucent, allowing the shape of the signature from the key to be visible enough for tracing on the blank.

And so Arthur traces– kneeling, still naked, in front of the window, bracing two sheafs of paper against glass with one hand while the other carefully and efficiently follows the dips and swoops of each letter with an overpriced pen. His drawing hand doesn't shake, doesn't linger uncertainly and leak excessive ink from the nib, doesn't create small hesitant furrows on the paper's surface where there ought to be none– to most eyes, these signatures will look authentic, done in real pen (the right kind of pen) by a real human hand. Trelawny will get damn good prices when he sells these bonds later, either to other conmen, or else as the genuine article to unsuspecting locals. It's worth the discomfort of the required stance, the way his hands start to get sore from the so long in an unnatural position, the way that his knees and his back ache from distribution of his weight.

"I've only saw Hosea briefly, dear boy." Trelawny tells him, slipping on his fine shirt like it's armor that he's especially proud to wear. "We figured it's best for me to keep my distance in town, lest anyone recognize us from Blackwater. As far as the law knows, I was never involved." A fact which makes Trelawny useful, strategically, an advantage unwise to squander.

"You've been seen with me this morning." Arthur counters, half-attentive. As each paper acquires the new signature, he lays them out on the open floor behind him, so that the ink has a chance to set without smudging. The collection of finished forgeries grows quickly, requiring Trelawny periodically stoop and collect all those with dry ink, stacking them neatly on the dresser, all of this a routine as familiar between them as the sex. "That might be a mark on your sterling reputation."

"Certainly," Trelawny answers easily, "But I think I can play that off as innocent business. People come to Valentine from quite a ways away– who's to say this isn't the first time we've met, dear boy?" He winks at Arthur as he puts on his vest and coat, a peacock in glorious raiment. "If nothing else, I can say that you seduced me, who was unaware of your dastardly reputation and too charmed to see beyond your rugged good looks; that should buy me enough time to get myself out of any bind."

Arthur raises an eyebrow archly, unimpressed, pausing in his work to look at Trelawny directly. "You been reading those books Mary Beth likes?" he shakes his head, tone blunt. "They'll run you out of here that much faster, if you say shit like that. People out here tend not to like _men like us_."

From the corner of his eye, he can see Trelawny raise his hand and point to the glinting gold of his wedding ring– which is a good point, Arthur thinks; the sort of people who'd run them out of town would have more trouble believing that a married man with three children would ever want to indulge this sort of activity regularly, except perhaps as some sort of idle product of boredom or curiosity. "And you'd be surprised at how willing people are to look away in a place like this, Arthur." Trelawny adds, unperturbed, "especially for an upstanding American man of class like myself." The meaning was implicit but obvious: upstanding meant rich, white, family from the right part of the right country, accent to match, comfortable around _society_ and bankers, all of which was announced in subtle differences of stance and the the tailoring of one's clothes, plain as day to people from that social world and invisible to everyone else. Hosea had tried for _years_ to teach Arthur how to affect those subtle distinctions, but they'd never taken: Arthur would never be anything but what he already was– an outlaw, ragged as the lawless wilds, unsuited to the kind of strutting displays required by 'upstanding men of class'. That much is also implicit, also obvious: the smile Trelawny wears is again ironic and self-depreciating, his voice flattening to add, "Don't worry, Arthur, I'll bribe anyone who might actually be a problem. I won't let harm follow me to camp."

Arthur knows Trelawny is good for that. He hums a short affirmative and nods, lets that subject drop, processes the remaining signatures as quickly as he can. Trelawny tells him about the contact he's going to meet and any other tidbits that Arthur might find interesting, half for joy of talking and half because it's actually relevant information. Trelawny's may not be so rough as Arthur, but the man is still an outlaw, and trust is a precious thing; he does not often get to speak freely, immersed too deep in a world of traded secrets where the wrong word can get get you killed in unpleasantly inventive ways; Arthur does not really mind Trelawny talking _at_ him. There's no expectation that Arthur should talk back, not unless he wants to, and that's what makes Trelawny good company– Arthur can handle great variations in people, so long as those people don't demand that Arthur act against his own nature, and Trelawny never has.

(The most interesting topic of conversation– in Arthur's admittedly biased opinion– is his new mare, for whom Trelawny suggests a name that Arthur begrudgingly likes.  
"You should name her Gwlithen." Trelawny declares, the name running smooth and and natural from his mouth.  
"Another one of your fancy English names?" Arthur asks, half-attentive; Trelawny had also suggested Boadicea's name, many years ago.  
"Mmm. Welsh." Trelawny affirms, a little amused and a little warm and a little speculative, " _And_ it'd look nice on the papers, if we ever bred her to Gwydion,"– his own spotted appaloosa stallion, which is a roundabout way of making the suggestion.  
Arthur snorts; he knows about horses and their breeding, that being one of his relatively few legal interests. "If I ever agreed to breed them." he replies. It's not quite a no, though– purebred thoroughbreds would go for more money, but there's plenty call for good strong horses, mixed breed or not, especially out here where horses are still more for work than show. Maybe in a few years– provided this lovely mare meets his expectations, and he's suitably impressed with Gwydion, and they all survive long for it to even be relevant.  
He does like the name, though. Gwlithen. It's a little strange on his tongue initially, but he likes how it feels to say, and it's as beautiful as she is– that's usually how he makes these decisions.)

Arthur doesn't linger very long, once his work's done– they don't have that kind of time, and for all of Trelawny's confidence about the accidental pseudo-progressiveism of self-absorbed townies, there's enough merit to Arthur's concerns that they should be seen leaving the hotel separately. Arthur does not expect this to be any different any of their other exchanges in the past– usually there's nothing beyond a casual wave– but Trelawny hesitates and follows him to the door, looking Arthur in the eye with another of those slightly mournful expressions that Arthur can't parse. "Thank you." he says, with more finality than Arthur thinks the moment really deserves.

Arthur tilts his head, confused, pausing before he opens the door to leave. "For what? You'll see me shortly, when you get that information about Sean." He thinks for a second, and adds, "Are you worried about your contact?" He's mildly concerned that there's something Trelawny isn't telling him, and he doesn't mind playing bodyguard, particularly since that's a reasonable claim for why rich stranger might want to hire the infamous Arthur Morgan.

Some of that must be visible on his face, because Trelawny shakes his head, waving away his concern. "No, this shouldn't be dangerous, don't worry." He squeezes Arthur's shoulder, and then steps away, very deliberately moving to the mirror to fuss with his tie, as if nothing particularly unusual has just occurred between them. "Just. Thank you." he says, now nonchalant.

Arthur's still feeling off-kilter about this, so he just nods. "You're welcome," he says slowly, hesitating for a few more seconds before adding, "If you aren't back in camp in a week, I'm coming after you."

Trelawny smiles at him, but waves his hand again to dismiss the idea. "A week, dear boy, never fear." he confirms, and so Arthur turns and leaves, shaking his head to clear the strangeness away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So warnings and notes:
> 
>  **Warnings** :  
>  \- the Not-Charles involved in the sex is Trelawny. Which i hard-implied was likely to happen in a previous chapter; this is the chapter where it actually occurs.  
>  \- The sex is a bit rough, and there is some love bites.  
>  \- The above is not necessarily why i'd characterize it as kinky-- that's partially because of Trelawny's preferences, but also because of the way that Arthur's pushing trelawny but paying really careful attention to where he's at.  
>  \- Someone thinks about someone else during the sex (you can probably guess who)  
>  \- SPOILER FOR CANON: Trelawny is cheating on his wife with Arthur here. The part that's a spoiler is the fact that he's married and has three kids, which he admit to in various camp dialogues, and you can also find Trelawny's house in St Denis and overhear him talking to his family. Trelawny and his wife do not have the kind of relationship in this world that would comfortably accommodate this kind of extramarital activity, and Trelawny is aware of that; it's discussed.  
>  \- this chapter also mentions homophobia.
> 
> Also, I didn't specify the lube, becuase. well. I've been doing a lot of research into sex in the wild west, and some info is kind of hard to find. My google searches (and those of my curious and longsuffering friends) are very interesting.  
>  There was definitely anal in the old west, and where there's anal there's lube. They probably used things like Vaseline or maybe cooking oils (Olive oil is p common historically, but I don't actually know if it would be geographically available in these eras, especially to a group of people who travel as much as they do). For my purposes, I'm kind of default assuming that they're using Vaseline, but i'm going to refer to it generically. Also, I'm writing a fic in which charles gets sent back in time by a magical dream-panther in the first chapter, so the merits of realism are kind of questionable at best.  
>  Anyway, regardless of the constraints of this era I'm writing inI, the point is-- IRL, vaseline and cooking oils are not great things to put near your bits, especially if you use latex condoms. All of these things are oil based, and will degrade condoms very quickly. IF you are playing with your bits, alone or with friends, please observe all appropriate safety, and take care with what kind of chemistry you expose to your genitals~~
> 
> I want to add an explanation right here to basically state explicitly the thing that goes over Arthur's head at the very end, but it doesn't look like AO3 has a way to do a spoiler tag, so it will forever have to be implied in this author's note~
> 
> Thank you, as always, for reading!  
>  I can be found at [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/00101010) and no other socials. Info for sending me prompts by email can be found there.  
>  (if anyone wants invites to PF, i have them and am happy to share.)
> 
> \- 42 / BooleanWildcard / Asterisk / * / 00101010


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for Charles processing trauma and grief, for mentions of Charles' history (which contains some abuse, tho not in as much detail as Arthur's chapter with similar topics). Specific warning for descriptions of intrusive thoughts. Also warnings for mentions of transphobia, sexism, and racism. There are some references to past misgendering.
> 
>  ~~also decided what to do with the event hiatus. Since I've basically finished the bingo pattern I was going for already, the goal is going to be to continue this story as the focus of most of my writing attention until I find a place can break it into part 2, since I designed the entire story as a series. Once I feel comfortable with the likelihood of that goal being met, I'm going to start breaking my focus down across the other projects I have open (which includes cowboys in spaaaaaaace~~~~).~~ The event is back ooon! which means my original plan (knock this thing out until i'm sure that i can get to a reasonable place to break the story into its series-constituent parts (ideally at a place that makes this story feel 'complete'ish) by the deadline)

Charles needs—

Charles needs to do something with his hands.

Charles's calm surface has long been a point of pride– it's not so much that he's _actually_ unshakeable, but the fact that people _think he is_ has saved his life more times than he can count. It's a skill he's had to cultivate carefully, persistent throughout his life both for its necessity and for the opportunities for its development, the product of inexorable precarity and danger that have so long been the defining conditions of his existence. He doesn't know if it's part of who he was meant to be– intrinsic, the way some people think of themselves– but it's certainly part of who is now, and probably always will be.

It's bittersweet, the pride he carries for this front– smoldering and uncomfortable, along the same lines as that which he feels for his scars: unfortunate that they were ever acquired, but marks he wears with pride for having survived, for spitefully continuing to exist in a world that tells him constantly that he has no worth and should not be.

That the inability of strangers (especially white strangers) to read him is often correlated to their misapprehensions about what his body means– his dark skin, his long hair, his size and broadness, all the features they arbitrarily tag to his gender, the strength of his body – that correlation only sharpens his facade; they see him and they think him brutish or stupid or alien or all of those things simultaneously, and never consider that he could be anything but that caricature of their own invention. And the assumptions, fallacious and inevitable– that people can know his deepest truths from a single glance (and that such knowing can never mutual), that he _is_ so simple (and they so complex), that they _deserve_ the automatic access (that privacy is an asset reserved exclusively for their own use)– they are nearly ubiquitous, tagged to different parts of his body depending on which aspect is most 'outsider' to the person doing the looking– his blackness, his masculinity, his native heritage, who he allows to touch him and how, those parts of his body labeled 'female' at his birth (albeit those primarily when he'd been younger, before he'd started presenting masculine); often some combination thereof.

But Charles has always been clever, knows how to handle hostile terrain, both social and physical: if they think him unreadable– and particularly if they think his calm surface has nothing beyond it, that he is impassive _because_ he is too dumb to have depths– then he will _absolutely_ use that against them. This skill was one of his first– and once one of his only– survival tactics, one of the few ways he could protect himself from a father driven to cruelty by loss and drink. Now it is his armor (and occasionally his weapon). Sometimes, on those rare occasions where he can bring the surface stillness inside, momentarily still the turbulent interior he keeps protected by that calm shell, it is even his comfort.

And so the recent inability to summon his calm has him adrift, and worse that it should be so hard _now_ , when he is struggling with a radical set of changes that defy the limits of what he'd previously understood reality to be. Because he still knows–  
and what should he even call it, his past life, the one from the future that hasn't happened yet and hopefully won't happen at all?–  
whatever he calls it, those experiences were _real_ ; he really had watched Eagle Falls die, he had seen the burnt remains of the camp, he had _buried_ Susan Grimshaw and Arthur– he had _buried Arthur_ and goddamn does he still remember the _feel of the man's corpse on his hands_ – he had lost the only family for which he could reasonably use that word since walking out on his father a decade and change ago.

 _Those experiences were real._  
As real as those he's living now, in this present. (The present that both is, and is not, the same as what he remembers as 'the past'.)  
As real as the gang-family (still alive!) around him.  
As real as what each of them are living through independently, experiences he watches in empathetically exquisite detail.  
Real, despite what any of said family would strenuously argue, should he ever tell any of them about his memories (should he ever try to bleed it from his chest, so that it might not exert so much pressure against him all the time.)

It's _hard_ to bear the weight of his future-history, the knowledge of its reality, so heavy on his shoulders, while simultaneously scrabbling to keep hold of where he exists in time, where his own edges are, what's real, and how, what it even means for something to be real in the first place– all while desperately trying to divert a (future-)future whose momentum seems unstoppable as rain.

When Charles was six, he fell in a river and nearly drowned; it's not something he remembers clearly, but he does remember (like he remembers the feel of Arthur's _corpse_ on his _hands_ ) the sensation of cold, of weight (his own and the water's), of water in his lungs, of struggling to breathe and finding only _yet more water_ , of the way the feeling lasted for hours after he'd been pulled free, of the way he coughed and wheezed for days thereafter. He feels like that again, wheezing and choking against relentless pressure, but now it's fear instead of water, nearly as solid and _definitely_ as persistent. It's completely unlike any fear he's felt before, and Charles _knows_ fear-- has been terribly scared, _all the time_ , his entire life. This fear is pervasive and paralytic.

And it never leaves, gnawing at his heels whenever he thinks he's re-acquired a fragment of that calm– all these memories and thoughts and feelings and the terrible terrible fear, a rush of fresh thaw to disrupt his still waters. The results are physical, with nausea and chill and shakiness like he's been sweating out a fever again. He claws for purchase in his mind, struggling to establish any solid ground beneath him, desperate for even just enough stability to catch his breath. Even that much seems impossible; he is unsteady on his own legs, a wobbly foal figuring out how to stand after experiencing something so insurmountably huge and overwhelming that he fears that it has remade him.

But this is not the first time that Charles has needed to re-learn the shape of his own edges again. He'd done it many times before, because he is the son of a black man and an indigenous woman in the heart of America, because he had been called a girl upon his birth, because he'd needed to reassess what 'family' and 'father' meant when the capricious whims of white army men had decided to steal his mother away for sport and cruelty and pleasure.  
Charles has needed to learn to care for someone who couldn't (and wouldn't) care for himself, too proud to do women's work and too lost in fear and drink to even feel his own grief.  
Charles has needed to learn how to take care of himself, how to feed himself with hunting and theft, because there was nobody else who was gonna.  
Charles had needed to learn how to kill men– and the importance of _never_ enjoying it– because these are the vital skills of folk who live on the edges of law designed only to serve the needs of rich white landed men. Charles has needed to learn how to walk and talk like the man that he already was, has always been, so that other men won't try to prove him otherwise by force.  
Charles has needed to learn how to heal, _and fast_ , because wolves are pack animals and only the clever and adptable can survive very long on their own, and Charles has been alone for a _very_ long time.

And so he enters a kind of triage with himself, a process both intuitive and familiar, feeling for his own boundaries, reaching for something with which to ground himself, trying to weather each successive wave of bewildering fear and pain as best he can, to process and cycle and _survive_.  
He has done this before.  
He can do it again.  
He will keep doing it, again and again, until something finally does take him out, and this _hasn't yet._  
This, too, shall pass.

He needs to find something with which to keep himself calm, what can fix this, what can grant him some stability.  
  
Resolving the thing for which he'd been sent back, presumably– removing the pins that hold up this terrible machine of Dutch's creation, the one that's carrying them down the path of exponentially extreme murder and mayhem and death. But that's a tall order, something he's already actively trying to do, and even seeing where and what those pins _even are_ seems so far beyond anything he's capable of. The thought makes him panic; he needs the calmness back to even broach that topic, and so he will find no relief there.

Being around Arthur, knowing where Arthur is, that keeps him calm. He's outrageously paranoid, whenever he sees Arthur riding away, wracking his brain for the haphazard events of his past life, trying to remember whether each job on which Arthur is sent carries particularly dangers. He hadn't known to mark Arthur's movements before, though, and it wasn't as if the Arthur of his past life confided the granular details of every single mission to him, for all the time they spent together. They'd only been starting to grow close, the last time, starting the dance that Charles had hoped would end in something serious and mutual, but everything had gone to shit too fast.

Now Charles wants to know where Arthur is always, wants to be in Arthur's presence always– and he knows, _knows_ , that he cannot indulge that fear, that it is not healthy. (That is the ghost of his father, that was his father's response, and Charles has seen how it can destroy people.) He loves Arthur, and he wants to be in Arthur's presence for that love, but he must be careful not to let the fear infect what he feels, not to become controlling and repressive, no matter how much his fear and trauma make him want to cling onto Arthur as the only lodestone whose presence he halfway understands– to do so would destroy their potential, would poison anything that might grow between them, would burn through the love and turn it destructive.

Charles is _not_ going to let this future-present play out the way his past life did, and part of that goal is not allowing what he and Arthur might've had to slip through his fingers without trying again– but he's not going to build whatever they might have on foundations made from his fear, either. His desperate need for stability and a reprieve from the terror is _not_ an acceptable excuse to strangle either Arthur or the partnership he wants with the man, nor can he ask Arthur to bear the sole responsibility for his own emotional well-being. Charles needs to do that work himself.

Charles feels a version of that same conviction regarding most of the wider gang, too, those that he would honor with the word "Family"– perhaps not as strongly as he feels it for Arthur, but nevertheless a close relative of the same circumstances. He will accept their comfort, he will found relationships with them out of love and respect, but he will similarly not allow himself to build those connections from the desperate pursuit of illusory stability.

So he needs something else, something inside of himself, an anchor that can remain under his own control. Something he can evoke repeatedly, carry with him; something he can do, or make.

It is so hard to be calm.

He needs to do something with his hands.

Something that's not whittling shapes into wood.

Because he only needs so many arrows.  
And there only need to be so many tent stakes and wheel spokes and spare bits for the wagons.  
And Jack _certainly_ doesn't need yet more little figurines of the gang's notable horses (he already has Taima, and Old Boy, and The Count, and Silver Dollar, and Boaz, and Brown Jack, and Charles is starting to run out of wood of appropriate quality for such figures.)  
(Charles had also made Boadicea, from memory, but this he'd given to Arthur instead, and the expression on Arthur's face– both stricken and touched– will forever be one of his cherished memories. He thinks of it whenever he walks past the man's tent and sees the little figure beside the glass-covered flower and photograph whose stories and significance he does not know.)

Charles casts back in his memories, tentative and careful, looks for something solid and soothing and comfortable, something that can be done with the hands. (There isn't very much. He thinks, sometimes, that he was put on this world to hurt and to cause hurt, the two most consistent trends in his life thusfar.)*

The only thing he finds is memories of his mother– memories both mournful and warm, tinged with profound loss; by taking her, those army men had also stolen his only connection to cultural roots that he hadn't known to ask about or how much he'd miss. But his mother _had_ taught him some things, before she'd been lost to them— many things– most of them skills involving the hands. His earliest memories of her– earliest memories at all– are of spinning yarn at her feet while she worked on various other needlecraft, feeding roving into a single strand and watching the mesmerizing twist of both yarn and spindle, that being a skill easy enough for an older toddler to learn, and a great way to keep said curious toddler occupied with not-destroying-everything-nearby. When he was slightly older, she'd taught him other skills– sewing, mending, embroidery. ("Things you'll need for your husband," she'd told him fondly, though she hadn't known him as anything other than her daughter, she'd been taken too early.) She'd taught him many of his survivalist skills, including how to find shelter and build tents, and what wild plants were edible, which were medical. Both she and his father had taught Charles hunting– it had been a shared activity, as had been butchering the kill and cooking (though most of the latter was done solely by her, on a more quotidian basis). It had been his mother to teach him the importance of the bison, his mother and her family who had taught him the rituals of its hunt (he can't remember their names, or even the name of her tribe, but he does remember their faces). Charles remembers her weaving, remembers the setup of her loom, the shapes that he'd followed with small hands on the blankets she'd woven to cover his childhood bed. She'd taught him a bit of weaving– it's the skill he'd been working on when she was taken. He's never woven since.

She wouldn't recognize him now, probably, not as he is, the way he's changed– she never knew him as a son, that she'd had a son at all– but nevertheless Charles wants a connection to her desperately, to evoke the safety he'd felt when he'd been so young, tracing the tapestries of his blankets in the dark. He thinks he could take up weaving again, with a bit of practice.

But that's an ambitious thing to start with– the looms aren't hard to make, but he recalls the frustration of trying to learn to tension so many parallel threads without letting them tangle, how to wrap the thing up at the end of day's work without accidentally destroying the warp– it'll take the kind of planning that needs calm prolonged focus, and its exercise will need patience, neither of which he's had in great supply lately. Perhaps something simpler, less resource intensive, at least to start. Mending, or perhaps embroidery.

Charles thinks he can manage that, and feels just a touch better for having made a decision.

The only problem is actually acquiring the materials– the camp, for all its progressive attitudes, still does divide up many tasks by perceived sex, dismissing things relegated to the territory of domesticity as 'women's work', as his father had. He'll have to ask the ladies for needle and thread and whatever else he'll need.  
He looks to Sadie first, but dismisses the thought immediately– she's off behind the chicken coop, at the edge of their overlook with the grazing horses, not yet joined the camp properly as more than a ghost. He's never seen her with a needle and thread, in either of his lives (for fabric, anyway, he _has_ seen her using them on skin), and no one has yet asked her to join the work of daily maintenance, lost as she is in grief.  
Grimshaw, perhaps? But Charles hesitates, because though he respects and even slightly likes Susan Grimshaw, she's also terrifying and would scowl at him for the perceived slight of taking work away from her girls.  
That leaves Tilly, both because Tilly is the woman he next feels most comfortable approaching, and because she's the only one currently in camp– the others are off in Valentine, drumming up work and getting into whatever trouble that only Dutch's folk can find. (They've been going to town quite regularly, and Charles recalls Mary Beth say something about semi-regular work as maids up in some rich woman's house; Tilly had gone the first few couple of times, and then stayed in camp ever since, keeping to herself.)

She's warm when she sees him approach, smiling up at him from her spot on a temporarily appropriated chair. Being one of the few not currently in Valentine, she's doing three different tasks simultaneously: keeping an eye on the stewpot so that it doesn't boil over, mending a tear in one of Bill's shirts, and minding Jack. One of Jack's books is on the seat of a second chair beside her, and Charles raises an eyebrow at it curiously.

Tilly shrugs, grabbing the book and sliding it into the bag with her kit, "I offered to help him with the reading, so Abigail could rest. She needs it." she says by way of explanation, inviting him to sit in the other chair with a gesture, which Charles does. "But she's still asleep." Tilly shrugs, glancing over to where Jack is sitting, a few feet away. He's in the grass, happily traveling an internal world of his own, a couple of the horses Charles has made for him in his lap; it looks like he's staging some small battle between them, with Brown Jack and The Count still behind a fortification in the form of a pile of sticks, Old Boy on the other side. It's slightly arresting, to see Jack using them as, well, toys– that's how they were intended, of course, but Charles generally thinks of himself as the kind of person only capable of generating pain and the tools of its manufacture, and it's pleasantly strange to see something he made with his own hands used for joy, instead.

And that _is_ why he's here.

Charles takes the offered seat, returning her smile with wan version of his own. "Mothering is hard work." he says, mostly to acknowledge her explanation; the words have a slightly wistful edge that he doesn't mean for them to carry, likely a product of his surprise at seeing things he made produce such happiness in Jack, but Tilly catches the tone and looks at him shrewdly– she's very perceptive, Tilly Jackson, had been one of the few who knew about his feelings for Arthur in his past life, and probably knows about them now.

"You want some of your own someday?" she asks, relaxing back in her chair and turning her attention back to her work, trusting Charles to spare some attention for Jack while he's there.

Charles is noncommittal, because he does know his answer. but has always thought the possibility so unlikely as to not be worth indulging, even speculatively. He shrugs, making a small humming noise that's not quite a confirmation, "Maybe someday, when I'm out of the life." Or, more accurately, _if_ , because for all Charles desperately needs to take Arthur and Himself and the rest of them away from this shit situation, it still seems so impossible, and he can't imagine it.

The direction this subject is sending his mind will very quickly get him spiraling back to things that he can't handle, back into the tumult that has been his standard mode since returning to this (past)present, and he does not want to lose his composure in front of Tilly; he shifts the subject away, abrupt and inelegant. "You're not in Valentine with the others." he observes, because it's the first thing he can think of.

He regrets it when her face darkens and she draws into herself slightly, focusing very specifically on the shirt in her lap. Charles knows trauma, and knows what it looks like when someone seeks the comfort of their own shell to escape cruel memory. But Tilly is game, does not retract entirely, answers him because she likes him and she's never been the kind to hide the cruel truths of the world. "I went in with Mary-Beth and Karen for a little while, but." she swallows. "Ran into some folks I didn't want to see, so it's better to stay here."

Charles feels a surge of protectiveness; he remembers that Tilly ran with another gang and that she didn't leave them on the best terms, but he's never been close enough for her to confide in him the details. Arthur knew (knows?), but hadn't told him. "Did they hurt you?" Charles asks before he can stop himself from prying, his voice low.

But Tilly rarely needs anyone's protection, and looks up at him, slightly sharp and disapproving. She's thinking about her answer; when she finds it, it's a smile that's not remotely pleasant, all teeth and bitter pride, and says "They tried, but I hurt them first, and got away." Charles nods, doesn't push further, and she gentles slightly, losing some of her guard. "I know how to handle them, don't worry." Then she gestures to him with her sewing needle, and turns the observation back on him. "You're not in Valentine, either."

Charles makes a face, allowing his expression to briefly show his distaste at the confined nature of towns. He'll go into them, but prefers to be out in the wild country, especially in a place as beautiful and lush as the heartlands. "Don't care to be." he answers, after a long second, because though Tilly has never pressed him on his silences, she's also not hte sort of person for whom they come either naturally or comfortably. "Hunting is a better use of my time."

Tilly nods at this, clever fingers guiding her sewing needle across the surface of the marred fabric, fast and familiar and a little mesmerizing to watch (it is always enjoyable to watch someone who is a master of their craft.) "Thanks for that," she replies immediately, "It's nice for _some_ folks to be concerned with the well-being of the camp, instead of just how much money they have in their pockets." Her tone is caustic, a little bitter, and she looks up furtively, eyes searching until they see Mrs. Grimshaw too far away to overhear, before she looks back down– that's an honest reaction, one she knows she'd earn a rebuke for.

Charles has never been good at receiving thanks or complements– doesn't really know what to do, especially when that kind of care-work is something he thinks should be automatic, the first thing people turn their efforts towards– so again he changes the subject, nodding to the work in her lap. "Do you know if there's extra of those supplies?" he asks.

She hadn't seen his nod, so he gestures towards her work when she looks up at him; she blinks at him, as if she can't imagine what he'd want with a needle and thread (he is reminded of Bill and Micah, of how callously they just throw their torn clothing towards the women– especially at Tilly, for the darkness of her skin against the lightness of theirs– how much they expect will just be done for them because fate arbitrarily decided they ought to be born with a penis and pale skin). "For mending? A needle and thread?" Tilly looks almost suspicious, her frown deep and thoughtful. "There are extras, but we'll mend your clothes for you if you need, Charles. It's no trouble."

Charles doesn't explain why it suddenly feels so important that he take up this skill again, do these things himself– can't quite put it into words, even if he wanted to– but he doesn't have to lie to find another explanation. "I'm used to doing for myself." he says, unconcerned; when that fails to thaw anything but the edge of her suspicion, he adds, "It's relaxing. I enjoy it."

This makes Tilly snort, and she shakes her head. "That makes one of us." but she puts her work down and leans over, digging through her bag for materials, gently pushing Jack's schoolbook to the side. It takes a moment, but she produces a packet of needles and some thread, wound around smooth sticks in makeshift bobbins. "We're never much for colors, so if you want more, you'll have to buy them from a general store." she says, digging around for the colors she remembers of Charles' shirts. "Do you want fabric for patches? Because you know you can't just sew bullet holes closed, it'll distort the shape of the clothes and make them wear down faster." She sounds skeptical that he has any skill, for all that he's been on his own for nearly as many years as she's been alive.

Charles shakes his head, "I was planning on darning them."

Tilly looks up, blinking again in surprise– it's not an easy skill, darning, especially on clothing made with thread as fine as most shirts are. "I don't think we have any spare darning eggs," she says, after a moment.

"I can make one." Charles answers, accepting the supplies she hands to him, temporarily storing them in the bag at his belt. There's another good thing about having carpentry skills– a surface on which to maintain the requisite tension for darning is a relatively easy thing to make–

He's distracted by a sudden stricken pall coming over Tilly's expression, as she sees something behind him– automatically on guard, he twists around, looking for the threat.

There is no threat, but it's immediately clear what inspired Tilly's reaction. Uncle, Mary-beth, Karen, and Arthur have just ridden up to the hitching post, presumably fresh from Valentine. Arthur has a new horse, and ordinarily that would be the thing to draw Charles's attention (she's beautiful and striking and a little flashy, which is exactly what Arthur likes, for all he strenuously denies it), were it not for how he's bowing slightly in the saddle, scowling deeply from a face that's black and blue and red from a fresh beating. Tilly, notably, has eyes only for Karen, whose bare shoulders and face are not quite so beaten as Arthur's, but which are blooming in dramatic red and purples, in the shape of hands and fists.

"What kind of trouble-" Tilly says under her breath, puts her work down, glances at Jack to make sure the boy is suitably enraptured with his game (which he is), and then marches off towards the riders, hiding her fear beneath a mantle of anger. "Karen Jones," she says, like it's a curse, "What in the world have you been up to-" Charles follows behind her, his own face and body impassive, as he goes to Arthur's side.

Karen isn't the least bit ashamed. She's on the edge of drunk, but not quite there (her drinking only got _really_ bad after Sean's death, Charles remembers, the thought a stab to his chest), and she lets Tilly wrap a supportive arm around her waist, grinning wide and proud. "Tried to rob a man, and he didn't appreciate it. Don't worry, Arthur got'm before anything serious happened." But Tilly definitely does continue to worry, because she knows that Arthur won't always be there to rescue Karen from the results of her own impulsive heists every time, as she leads Karen away.

"Is that–?" Charles asks Arthur, more quietly, gesturing at Arthur's face to fill in the rest of the question. Arthur cringes, doesn't complain or resist when Charles reaches forward, holding his chin gently and angling his head this way and that, to see the extent of the injuries.

It's Uncle who answers, laughing raucously like Arthur _isn't_ sporting the kinds of deep bruising that indicates someone was literally trying to crush his skull in, the kind of injury where the difference between life and death is more luck than skill and resilience. "Nope, that's from a barfight. The whole saloon was up in arms, you shoulda seen it! Arthur got in with this big ol' feller who was coming after Javier something awful– would've killed him! They took it outside and everything, whole town came out to watch! Our Arthur put'm down though, in the end! Would've killed him, too, weren't for that preacher feller– what was his name? the one always begging by the stable for alms for the poor?"

"Thomas Downes," a name that's another spike through Charles, strait out of his past life, a reminder that things are happening _quickly_ here and that he doesn't have time to dawdle. Released from Charles' careful inspection, Arthur spits at the name, blood mixed in with what he produces, and licks over his gums regretfully. "Not that you were helping much in that fight, old man." Arthur always goes after Uncle, in that way that he thinks is joking but neither completely is nor sounds like it is– but this is actual frustration, hackles still up from the dregs of recent battle.

Uncle starts to say something about Lumbago, but Charles draws Arthur away before he can start going after the old man in earnest, saying "I have something for that bruising." If Arthur were a horse, his ears would be back and his teeth bared, but he does follow Charles nonetheless, to the little lean-to that Charles shares with Javier and Bill, away from a hapless target on which to vent his frustrations.

That name, Thomas Downes, it's familiar– clearly someone Important from their past life– but Charles can't remember the specifics, doesn't know _who_ that is or _why_ they're important, only that he _needs_ to know, needs to figure that out, and soon.

There's more excitement later in the day– Arthur and Karen aren't the only people whose return to camp earns a significant amount of attention. Dutch– thankfully– had been (loudly) occupied with Molly for the brunt of the day behind the pseudo-privacy of closed tent-flaps, which– in turn– means Hosea has been making himself scarce. They both miss Arthur and Karen, and more for the better, given how frightful Arthur looks in particular. By evening, though, Dutch has emerged, looking proud and relaxed, satiated like a well-fed lion, and Hosea is oncemore perching at the central table with his newspaper. Thus, they are present to see the next two dramatic arrivals: Lenny and Trelawny, riding in together with drastically different expressions.

Lenny is shaking and terrified, nearly as sweaty as his horse; Trelawny has a hand over the younger man's shoulder, patting him and making soothing noises. "There there, dear boy, you've escaped the law, there's nothing more to worry about!"

If their arrival hadn't caught Dutch and Hosea's attention, Trelawny's words– carrying on that flamboyantly lilting voice– _definitely_ do. Their eyes meet, and they're up and approaching the two in a single stride, Dutch one step ahead of Hosea. Arthur (who'd been relaxing on the edge of Charles' presence, uninvited but certainly welcome, just far enough to claim plausible deniability or coincidence should anyone decide to comment) hesitates only a second before following them. Charles has no real reason or right to follow– he's the newest member of the gang, after all, barring Sadie, whose joining is nowhere near official yet– but nevertheless he does, and his presence gets no comment from any of them– Dutch, likely, because he's distracted; Arthur because he takes as much comfort from Charles' presence as Charles does his; Hosea does look at him speculatively, but says nothing as Charles stands behind the lot of them.

"Law?" Dutch is saying, voice crackling with that potentially dangerous edge, "We're supposed to be laying low. Did Law follow you here?" Charles thinks it's a _very_ good thing that Dutch hasn't seen the state of Arthur's face, given those words.

Lenny looks even more terrified– already was, and is that much more under the threat of Dutch's explosive rage. "No, no, I was careful! No law followed me here!" his voice is high and reedy, and he sounds more like the relative child that he is, than facade of intellectual outlaw that he normally tries to project. "That was just up in Strawberry– they tried to _lynch_ me–"

Hosea holds up his hands, interpolating himself as the soothing counterpoint to Dutch's capricious temper. "Shhh, son, it's okay, nobody's going to get at you now. Tell us what happened."

This works, cuts through the van of Lenny's fear– Hosea's voice just has _that quality_ , and Charles thinks it's part of why Arthur is so loyal to the man, loves him so deeply– and probably why Hosea's such a good conman. "I- Micah-" Lenny starts to say, stops himself, gulps, takes a deep breath, and starts again, forcing himself to go more slowly. "Micah, he recognized someone up in Strawberry, went fucking _wild_ – started just shooting everybody– we had to run. Law got him real fast. _Nearly_ got me, and wasn't looking nearly as kindly as to him, but I managed to get away. He's– Micah's– in jail up there. Word is the sheriff's gonna hang him, at the beginning of next month–" He's fighting the edge of a panic attack, and Charles wants to offer some sort of consolation, advice for how to stave off the worst of it, for all that Lenny normally annoys him. In front of Dutch, though, he doesn't dare.

Dutch's expression darkens, turns serious, and he nods– but Strawberry's far enough away that it doesn't cross into real anger, that he looks more thoughtful and dismayed than actually worried. He turns to Trelawny, who seems immune to the edge of threat that Dutch always wears like parade armor. "My news is a bit more cheerful," Trelawny says, in response to the implicit question, "Information on the whereabouts of our young Sean! He's in the care of a particularly nasty group of bounty hunters, Ike Skelding's gang. Word is they plan to ship him east, into federal custody, in a week or so."

This set of interactions has very quickly become the center of the camp's attention, for all that people are pretending to be occupied elsewhere with whatever they'd been doing– the camp is far too quiet for that to be case. The news about Sean is met with a palpable sense of relief, a collectively released held breath that Sean is both _still alive_ and relatively closeby, so strong that Charles can almost feel it as a tangible thing behind him. Arthur alone looks grim and unsurprised– he'd already known, then, probably heard from that meeting with Trelawny days ago, and thus has focused on the part of Trelawny's news that _doesn't_ bode so well: a gang of bounty hunters so large as to have a name, and that timeline. That's short, for a rescue.

Dutch knows it, too. He's not as explosively angry as he risked being a moment ago, but he certainly _is_ collecting dissatisfaction around himself, wings he shuts close against his body. He turns, expression stormy, already shouting "Arthur" to call the man, without realizing Arthur's already at his heels– was always, has always been, will probably always be right at his heels, he doesn't _have to_ call, and that's what kills Arthur in the end–

The thought has him scowling, and Dutch must see and misinterpret (or, perhaps, correctly interpret) the cause of it, because he pauses at Charles, straitening and narrowing his eyes. "Arthur," he says again, after a long moment, "Find a way to get Micah out of that Jail– but first, take Lenny into town. Buy him a drink or two; kid needs to relax after a day like this." He catches sight of Arthur's bruised face for the first time (not quite so fearsome as earlier in the day, thanks mostly to Charles's efforts), "And however you got to looking like that, _don't do it again._ Try not to cause more trouble, we don't need that kind of attention. Then, tomorrow, ride out and get more information on these bounty hunters, see if there's a way we can get Sean back." and then he says something that reminds Charles of _why_ he'd joined this gang in the first place, why he'd trusted Dutch for so long in his past life, words that have come out of Charles' own mouth more than once, "We won't leave a man behind, not in this family." But he's looking at Charles again, his expression dark, "And since you're so dedicated to being Arthur's shadow lately, Mr. Smith, you can join him."

Charles doesn't know what to make of that; the displeasure and bitterness behind Dutch's words are obvious, but he's not entirely sure _how_ it's meant, what part of his presence nearby Arthur seems to be the source of Dutch's frustration. He says nothing, just gets out of Dutch's way as Dutch stalks past, clearly having finished his pronouncements and expecting no challenges from either of them. Charles will offer no resistence, of course– he has absolutely no interest in challenging Dutch in any way, of falling on the man's bad side– but Arthur is not so patient, more familiar with his surrogate father and thus willing to needle him about the lack of wisdom, particularly about Micah. Arthur follows Dutch, hackles up, finding a place to vent the anger he's been nursing since his return earlier in the day (and may any deity save Charles from the obsessive tendency of cismen to sit and stew in their emotions, when they know neither how to fix the source of them nor how to acknowledge that they exist at all.)

"Dutch, I don't know what you see in Micah, but he ain't worth saving. We ought to let him hang, he'd do the same for any of us–" there's more, Arthur is half-whispering in urgent undertone to Dutch, continues on as he closes the distance between them. Dutch will not allow himself to hear, though, and so their voices start to rise, start to approach a full-out shouting match as the two men pause at the entrance of Dutch's tent.

This will spiral _quickly_ out of control, if given half a chance, and so Charles starts to move forward, eager to bleed off the tension _somehow_ , however best presents itself when he reaches their sides– probably he can just call Arthur away, ask him for help saddling Taima– he's stopped, though, by Hosea's hand on his shoulder. "While I appreciate your intentions." the older man says softly, with an abortive little half-shake of his head, something the rest of the camp wouldn't catch despite their continued efforts to eavesdrop. "It's not worth it to intervene." he says this with finality, grave and exhausted. "Let them shout it out, then get Arthur out of here so they can both cool off." His expression turns knowing and a little mischievous, "Get my boy to relax a little in Valentine, he needs it." He squeezes Charles' shoulder once, and then walks off without a second glance, leaving Charles somewhat bewildered behind him.

But he appreciates the advice, as hard as it is to actually follow– he hates this strife, hates how it smothers Arthur in a pall of dissatisfied anger, hates how it ripples through the entire camp and ratchets up anxiety and stress. With a sigh, he goes to saddle Taima and wait, joining Lenny, who is still lingering shakily at Maggie's side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only further information I have to grant in this bottom note regarding the warnings in the topnote is for the misgendering-- Charles thinks frequently about his experiences in childhood. He is AFAB and so he mentions how his parents thought of him as their daughter, etc.  
>  It's also worth noting that Charles' transmasc experience throughout this fic does hold a bit closer to common narratives in some way-- particularly here by saying that he has been this way since a small child and has known about it since then. I do want to say, though, that this is not necessarily the ubiquitous experience, and that there are plenty of trans people who did not/do not experience childhood dysphoria. No part of Charles' trans experience is meant to speak universally, nor meant to imply that how he experiences things are more valid than how others experience things.  
>  That probably (hopefully) doesn't need to be said, but because I do see some really unpleasant forms of this conversation crop up from time to time in some of my trans community spaces, I feel the need to make that nuance explicitly clear here too.
> 
> Also, oop, almost forgot to mention some of the canon stuff--  
>  The parenthetical marked with an asterisk, the first half of that is a paraphrasing of one of my favorite Charles campfire dialogues.  
>  The thought about people taking him for dumb/stupid is a reference to a different campfire dialogue between himself and Uncle.  
>  Mentioning Bill and Micah being casually racist is all over the game.  
>  Lenny's explanation of what happened in strawberry paraphrases the game's version and uses a couple of phrases directly, but is not a transcript.
> 
> Next chapter: Drunken Shenanigans, probably. still deciding from whose perspective to write that. Kinda could be either Arthur or Charles.
> 
> [I can be found on pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/00101010), which also has a link to a form that can be used to send me prompts.
> 
> Thank you for reading,
> 
> \- BooleanWildcard / * / Asterisk / 42 / 00101010


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's two in the morning and i should go to beeeeeeeeed and probably eat something oops. But hey look, an update, and i wanted to post it before I deleted it all in a fit of capricious frustration tomorrow~~
> 
> These past few weeks have really fucking sucked. Partner ended up in the hospital for a week, thanks to a complication with one of his medical conditions (not covid, thankfully, but a condition that makes him very high risk re: covid) that can occur even under the best of circumstances. Right now is extremely _not_ the best of circumstances. i was not able to visit him but for 3 hours a day, due to restrictions on visiting hours, and during that time i was exposed to the wonderful cross-section of humanity that thinks visiting a hospital maskless in the middle of a pandemic in a state that's beginning to experience a spike in COVID cases is a good idea.  
>  I was a hot mess, because that's my best friend and I really couldn't do anything about it or for him, and tbh I'm still a bit of a hot mess.   
> Things are okay, now, though. He was in the hospital for awhile, but then he came home, and things have been better, but there's been a lot of recovery and care work and getting/keeping my shit together and his shit together and desperate cuddling and happy kitty snuggle piles.  
> TL;DR, this update is later than I wanted it to be, and it's not quite what i wanted it to be, but Some Shit's Been Up.
> 
> back on topic:  
> I am going to not whale on myself as a writer right now, but let the record show that I would really like to.
> 
> Warnings! Specific warnings in the end note, as usual! General warnings to do with:  
> Disclosure of trans identity! Drunken shenanigans! Drunken shenanigans of a romantic nature! Hangovers! Riding horses drunk! (don't do this, and i believe it technically counts as a DUI in some jurisdictions). Some Awkwardness! Fluff and Angst! Probably very sappy!
> 
> I have flagged two sections-- the first, after the *!*, is the entire section where characters have romantic contact while drunk, becuase there are consent issues involved with drinking, so if you'd rather skip that whole section entirely, you can do so. There's a bit more information on the end-note, if you're not certain.  
> I have secondarily flagged the sub-section within that features the disclosure of Charles's trans identity, becuase sometimes that's a really raw topic and I get that. It starts with *!!*  
> both sections end after the ~*~; those events ARE, however, mentioned elsewhere throughout the rest of the chapter.
> 
> Next couple of chapters are going to be a little slower, but that's planned; gonna try to focus on wrapping up one of my early projects for another fandom in August, which may slow down this fic's not-really-a-schedule.

Arthur feels like a goddamn thunderstorm, when they're finally riding out of camp.

He hates it. He hates how heavily the emotions weigh on his shoulders, dragging behind him like Dutch's words are some kind of tether, staking him to his tent like he's still a child, like he's _not_ Dutch's most loyal enforcer, the man that Dutch raised. It makes him feel small and weak and angry– the kind of feelings that lesser men (and sometimes _he, himself_ ,) chase away with wanton violence and drinking, hungry for any distraction.

It's so easy– _so easy_ – to stray in that direction, and he wants to, _so badly_ – but that position of enforcer, protector of his family, whose associated duties he takes more seriously than he's ever before taken anything in his life ( _including fatherhood_ )– it demands that he do otherwise, that he _not_ indulge the anger that collects in the tension of his shoulders and the rigidness of his spine.

The problem is that he doesn't know _how_ to dispel it, release the way it crackles around his neck and jaw like it's trapped between the hairs of his beard. It's like static, like lighting– he only knows how to cast it away from his body by grounding it in someone else, physically, violently, in a way that's usually permanent for one of them (and so far, not for him).

When he was younger, when he was less responsible and less worried (before John hadn't left them with a pregnant Abigail those years ago, before he'd chosen the gang over Mary, before he'd known what the loss of Isaac felt like) he'd've indulged those urges without a further thought, immediately drowning the whispering part of himself that still weakly offered moral objections; now, though, he's riding alongside Lenny and Charles, two men that are younger than him, newer to the gang. (As far as Arthur's concerned, Charles has already proven himself a equal (and likely an _authority_ , ethically speaking) for that good head he's got on his shoulders, but _Lenny_ – Lenny's buried in his books and _extremely_ green, still figuring out where the edges between fantasy and reality are with regards to the life of an outlaw. Arthur doesn't want to lose Charles's respect– well, not either man's, really – and he doesn't want to give Lenny the impression that all of Dutch's Boys are as rabid and explosive as Micah is, or that it's okay to be the lowest common shade of themselves that Good Folk Everywhere _believe_ them to be.

(He doesn't want to think about which of those weighs on him more, what's implied about the depth of what he wants from Charles.)

But, of course, that doesn't mean Arthur knows _what to do_ with this anger, instead. He's been trying for years to figure that one out, and still so often he defaults to mayhem, that simple euphoria of flesh striking flesh (usually in strife).

But Charles is not cowed by Arthur's storminess, even though Lenny obviously is (It's visible in Lenny face, his expression uncertain, hiding that edge of fear; it makes Arthur retract further into himself)– Charles is steady, shows off that great instinct with volatile situations, is far more interested in (worried about) what Lenny experienced in Strawberry than anything to do with Arthur's familial drama with Dutch. He asks Lenny questions, voice steady and reliable as it always is, and Arthur lets himself be drawn in, grounding himself in Charles' steadfast presence at his side, letting that carry him along to the actual content of the conversation, to Lenny's answers directly.

Those answers aren't soothing, but the kind of anger and resentment Arthur harbors for Micah feels like something manageable; it's the kind of anger that lends itself to the maintenance of his shallow self-control, if only because Micah's the example of what Arthur _doesn't_ want to be.

And _goddamn_ Arthur does _not_ want to be like Micah. The man had been drunk– not surprising– when he and Lenny'd gotten to Strawberry, and apparently hadn't been around ordinary people for more than five minutes before he was going after some stranger, guns blazing. They'd fled with all the law the tiny frontier town could muster behind them, and not successfully: Micah'd escaped a bullet (Arthur doesn't feel bad for the way he curses the man's survival), but then Micah'd been captured anyway, hauled away to the Strawberry Jail with promises that he'd hang. Lenny'd only _just_ escaped, and wouldn't've been nearly so lucky as to be brought in alive, if he hadn't.

It's enough conversation to fill the short trip to Valentine, and Arthur feels almost entirely himself as the already-familiar buildings loom closer on the horizon. Still drawn to civilization with the natural ease that most outlaws lose eventually, Lenny urges Maggie forward compulsively, eager to reach the saloon despite the misgivings he's been voicing about actually drinking. Arthur takes advantage of this to rein his new mare slower, riding at a leisurely pace beside Charles on the widening highway. "Makes me want to leave Micah where he is. Let him hang" he said in undertone, low enough not to carry on across the wind to Lenny's ears– it's not something he'd ordinarily risk saying out loud, something so bluntly against their leader's orders, much less in front of anyone else, brothers-in-arms or otherwise– but Charles is different.

And Charles agrees. He meets Arthur's eyes, expression dark and worried and far away, and nods seriously. "We'll take our time getting Sean."

That's not what Arthur's expecting– agreement, sure, but it's riskier for Charles to make such statements than it is for Arthur; Arthur can't suppress his delighted grin.

Would that they could get away with it. —

Charles breaks off from Lenny and Arthur outside the saloon, hitching Taima at the post beside Gwlithen & Maggie but not immediately following the other two towards the door. He hangs back, nodding to the stable, saying something about needing provisions for Taima– but his gaze is pointed towards a man proselytizing at a roughshod table across from it, frowning like he's trying to attach a name to the preacher's face. Arthur follows the gaze and almost growls in recognition (but for the risk of ushering back the storminess that had dissipated on their ride).

"Is that–?" Charles begins, but lets the end trail off as a question, having never actually met the man (to the best of Arthur's awareness).

"Downes," Arthur confirms, said like it's a swear at the memory that comes with it, "Pulled me off the big fella in that fight the last time I was here." He winces at the memory, both because that big bastard's fists left wounds that are still plenty fresh, and because it's he's not sure it's been long enough for the bartender to forgive and forget for that unholy chaos, much less to welcome their patronage.

Arthur can't place the expression that accompanies Charles' noncommittal response– confirmation? – but the younger man waves him inside after Lenny. "I'll catch up with you." Charles tells him, "try not to get kicked out before I get back."

Gods willing.

The bar's tense when he enters, but less becuase the patrons recognize him– a few do, but this is a livestock town on a busy day, and a non-lethal bar fight isn't a particularly notable occurrence here, even when the town bruiser gets his ass handed to him by a stranger– it's the bartender who hesitates when Arthur joins Lenny among those waiting to be served, recognizing him immediately. Arther's proud of his own measured reaction to the tension; he doesn't snap or spout off, as would normally be his wont, and instead slips into his most mollifying affect– he's just here for a drink with a couple of friends, no trouble, he hadn't meant for that fight earlier to get so out of hand. Arthur doesn't even start things with the drunk at the bar beside them, not even when the man starts parroting back everything he says to Lenny with all the obnoxious bluster of someone much farther into his whiskey than Arthur currently is.

Once served, they take up a spot in the corner with a handful of chairs. It's what passes for privacy in a saloon like this, allowing Arthur to rest the edges of his frayed patience while he and Lenny work up a buzz good and quickly, letting the harsh chemical burn of the alcohol drag the hems of woolen euphoria heavily across their nerves.

They're both three cups deep by the time Charles joins them– or, well, Arthur is four (he realizes as he looks down at his hands and tries to figure out which whiskey is the one he'd gotten for Charles again). It doesn't actually matter, because both appear to be empty now. "I'll get you another," he says, ignoring how happy it makes him that both Charles and Lenny are having a laugh at his expense.

He's forgotten how good it feels to be spend time with his makeshift family, drinking or otherwise– and given how quickly the drinking has rendered his awareness into a series of disjunctive snapshots, strung together haphazardly by the grace of whiskey, he's liable to forget quite a bit more before the night is over.

True to form, Arthur can't quite plot the rest of the night on a timeline. There's definitely line dancing at some point (possibly before Charles came back?); Lenny finds the spontaneous cowboy dance-off both strange and delightful, leading Arthur to the happy conclusion that Lenny has not spent nearly enough time drinking in strange bars with strange men, which (he announces loudly about three inches from Lenny's ear, leaning heavily against the slighter man for balance, _probably_ after the dancing) they need to rectify _immediately,_ and _frequently_ , every time they see a saloon.

The fella from earlier tries to start some more shit– or perhaps he doesn't, and Arthur's still just enough of the headstrong terrified shade of himself that he'd been when he was younger, that used to lash out wantonly for any provocation, that he still lets the drink try to twist ordinary words into a challenge– but either way, Arthur manages to ignore that pulsing beat in his chest and his neck that tell him to chase his own anger and to fucking drown that fucking asshole in the fucking horse trough out back; instead, he scares the other man off before it can get that far with some bluster and his well-practiced outlaw growl.

Lenny catches him off-guard a bit later, just when the last rays of the setting sun are streaming through the windows; they're both up on the balcony, being ridiculous with the increasing failure of their balance and some glasses of whiskey (the drunker you are, Arthur knows, the funnier it is that a world-class gunslinger can barely hold onto a shot-glass a couple stories above some poor unsuspecting asshole's head, especially if you're the gunslinger and not the poor unsuspecting asshole.) The question is unintentionally sharp– though Lenny clearly doesn't mean it to be, not with the way he's grinning as they pull back from the edge of the railing, trying (and failing, as much as Arthur is) to stifle his giggles at their mutual inability to keep the aforementioned whiskey glasses aloft. "Why aren't you married, anyway?"

Arthur is momentarily bewildered, speechless, as the words and their disjunctive seriousness catch up to a brain still very much operating on the 'it's funny to drop whiskey on strangers' level. "Oh, uh." he pauses, treading emotional water, "No one would have me." which is as true as anything else he's ever said on the subject. Lenny is unfazed, not nearly as practiced at drinking as Arthur is, and too far gone to recognize that his question has unintentionally drawn blood– Arthur shakes his head, trying to dispel his own discomfort so easily; he knows well the rule that if your brother-in-arms doesn't _mean_ hurt you, when you're both drinking, that it's best to just let the affront sail on by– but that doesn't help Arthur regain his equilibrium.

He and Charles learn that Lenny'd been sweet on Jenny, another dour note in a generally up-beat evening (and Charles is definitely there for this part)– it's one of those drunken confession that comes up over bittersweet war stories that they're sharing in their corner. They're recollecting on the violence with which they're so familiar, the toll it demands from all of them, the blood price that they only pay if they're lucky (and someone else pays when they're not). Lenny's hunched over his newest glass of whiskey, blinking like he's trying not to cry, drawn into himself like it's possible to carry himself back through time and just _see her_ again, if he can only get his shoulders to touch. He tells Arthur and Charles about her anyway, he who'd known her so much better than either of them, and she sounds like a stranger in Lenny's recollections. Arthur regrets that, keenly, regrets not coming to know her better– regrets also that he doesn't know what to do now that she's gone, doesn't know how to offer Lenny any comfort beyond an awkward but heartfelt squeeze of the shoulder, (he's never figured out how to chase away those ghosts for himself, either).

He doesn't know whose loss it is, that brings such a haunted echo of Lenny's expression onto Charles's face as their youngest peer talks, but Arthur regrets that loss too. He watches Charles pull Lenny into a brief one-armed hug, offering the same steady wordless comfort that Arthur cherishes as a lodestone.

They both rescue Lenny from the effects of his mouth a few more times that evening– Lenny's good at accidentally leveling capricious questions or statements that just rub the (frequently racist) inhabitants of a town like Valentine the wrong way. This is a jovial (and surprisingly progressive) saloon, and there's very little that either Charles or Arthur offering some mollifying words and a fresh drink can't smooth over.

At some point in very early evening, when the sun's just slid beyond the horizon and it's starting to get actually-dark, beyond the grey haze of twilight, Arthur wanders outside to the horses and finds Charles already there, doing the thing Arthur'd been planning to do and offering their three mares sugar cubes, freshly acquired from the bartender. Arthur knows he's wearing that goofy smile that usually tries to hide– he can feel the way it's twisting his cheeks– but he's far too drunk for hiding it, and can claim it's his softness for the horses if anyone presses him too hard. He produces his own sugar cubes, from a well-maintained stash in his pockets, and offers one to each of the three.

Maggie's still a bit shy of Arthur, as it's not really been his job to tend to the camp's horses in years and thus she doesn't recognize him as readily as Charles, but Taima and Gwlithen are happy enough to take his sugar cubes, and their fearlessness makes Maggie brave enough to take her own without too much fuss. Freed of his offerings, Arthur accepts nuzzling from the first two, which he half-suspects is their attempt to ferret out the rest of the sugar in his pockets. He doesn't look abashed, though, when he looks up and sees Charles watching him– just pets Taima's head and angles himself slightly to put the pocket she's nosing just out of her reach.

"I let you take Taima, up in Colter." Charles says this softly, like it means something very important (and a little bit like it's a question– but that doesn't make any sense at all, so Arthur chalks it up to the whiskey.)

"Yea," he confirms nonetheless, "She's real great. Handled that nasty blizzard on the way to the Adler's ranch without any trouble." Arthur rubs Taima's soft nose, sneaking her another sugar cube that Charles certainly notices– but he's looking distracted, and he doesn't react, just continues staring at Taima's mane with a the slightly stricken, faraway expression that he wears sometimes, and Arthur doesn't think it's _just_ becuase of how much of Charles' trust is bound up in the gesture of letting Arthur _borrow his horse_ in such dangerous conditions ((His _horse_ – Charles's _only_ friend, in so many years of running alone and trusting nobody with himself but her).

Without thinking, Arthur reaches out and grabs Charles's shoulder, gently tugging the other man to him in a gesture of affection and comfort; it feels so automatic that Arthur forgets it's something that's only familiar to his fantasies, that this _isn't_ something they actually do all the time. And it continues not to occur to him, becuase Charles leans into the movement, lets himself be pulled into Arthur's arms and buries his face in Arthur's collarbone, like this _is_ familiar, or like Arthur's not the only one who fantasizes about it.

Arthur feels warm, a deeply resonant sensation rising from his belly and radiating from his chest, a warmth beyond what's attributable to the whiskey.

*!*

And then– Arthur's _pretty sure_ this event follows the previous– they're not around the horses anymore, but up against the side of the saloon, in the narrow alleyway between the building and its neighbor, hidden by the shadows and ignored by the drunks attending to their own merry business meters away (nobody pays real attention to two drunks necking in an alleyway at this time of night, and especially not so close to any business frequented by prostitutes). Arthur still has an armful of Charles, but in a very different capacity: this Charles is almost frenetic, boxing him in against the wall, pressed firmly across the front of him. It's not a position that Arthur's used to occupying, but he basks in the attention, loves the way Charles is running his hands across Arthur's body like he's planning to draw a map, his face nuzzling into Arthur's neck. There's a slight edge of desperation to Charles's movements, and that's the only thing that seems a bit out of place, that makes Arthur concerned.

But Arthur doesn't want this to stop, and even through the whiskey he can recognize the risk here, that Charles might flee both their friendship and whatever else they're currently trying to establish with their bodies. That's really _what_ he wants to know– the parameters of what they're establishing here, _what_ they're doing– even if he _does not_ feel up to the task of figuring that out in his current state.

"What- Why–" he starts to say, trying with some desperation to force his blunt tongue to form the words that this delicate situation requires, and failing. But Charles pauses and doesn't steps away, just leans back enough that he can see Arthur's face, keeping their hips delightfully close together. His expression is quizzical– two short words are not enough to convey Arthur's meaning, so Arthur casts helplessly around inside his head for more. "What're we doing?" That sounds like the wrong question to his mind, and he cringes at himself, but Charles keeps giving him that steady careful look, like he's sizing Arthur up (like he _hasn't_ put away all those shots that Arthur saw him take, inside).

"Chasing away some bad memories with better ones." Charles answers, evasive, letting his hands drift to Arthur's hips and exerting gentle pressure to keep them close– not enough force to imply that Arthur is actually trapped (he can break this contact at any time), but enough to make clear that this is how Charles wants them right now, so close that Charles can feel Arthur's body reacting to his proximity.

Arthur hums– or keens, he's not actually sure how to characterize the noise he makes– wants to dive back into what they're doing, but he needs something less ambiguous than that. He digs through his mind for more words: "For a lon-" he starts to say, and then the braincell catches up with the whiskey and stops him where he is, "for more than tonight?" he asks instead, which really isn't better.

Charles's smile is low and slow and warm, and he accompanies the grin by leaning forward languidly against Arthur, a pleased mountain lion that's caught something delicious. It sends a spike down to Arthur's groin, but there's something deeper too, less physical: Charles _relaxes_ , that little sharp edge of fear that was bothering Arthur chased away by whatever tertiary communication is occurring between them. He barely catches Charles' verbal reply, too happy to see that fear gone: "As long as you'll have me."

Arthur makes a happy noise, leaning back against the wall and lifting his chin, an invitation that Charles _eagerly_ takes, nuzzling back up to Arthur's neck with little electric kisses and nips. That skin is sensitive, both for being a vulnerable join of his body and also for being frequently hidden behind a beard, and he loves the strange, almost-uncomfortable sensation of Charles' face displacing the hair there.

*!!*

There's another gap in memory, but probably a vanishingly short one, becuase they're still up against the wall, and he's pulled Charles' shirt up enough to let his hands beneath the hems, fingers straying across ribs and tracing the muscles of Charles's back. "Want your cock in me." Arthur says, low in Charles ear; Charles freezes, and Arthur has a moment of panic, casting back in half-blank memories to see if he's dramatically misread the situation.

The answer Charles gives is not immediately clarifying, but it does stop Arthur's panic. Charles hasn't stepped away, but that seems to be a very deliberate thing, given the sharp way he's looking at Arthur's face– not like Arthur's said something _wrong_ , exactly, but like he's trying to read Arthur in a very serious way, like Arthur's suddenly a wild animal whose character Charles is uncertain of. "Might disappoint you, then," Charles says in a tone that'd be light if it wasn't so similarly careful, "I don't have one." There's a second of pause, and he ads, "Not in the conventional way." He adjusts how he's standing, such that he's straddling Arthurs's leg, one thigh still pressed against Arthur's groin, but now his own pressed is against Arthur's thigh, and without an answering hardness.

Arthur's brain is flailing through whiskey and fear, so it takes a moment for it to grab ahold of anything, but when it does he feels, paradoxically, relief– maybe Arthur, despite himself, hadn't managed to fuck this thing up in record time. This is a situation he's actually not a stranger to. He must _look_ relieved, too, judging from the slightly suspicious confusion that's starting to cross Charles' face. "You won't disappoint me." Arthur says quickly, grinding upwards with the thigh that Charles is straddling. "I'll be glad to take whatever you want to give me, wherever you want to put it~" he can't help his own excited leer at the words, or the way he hopes that there might be a vice versa, because he's wanted Charles in any way that Charles will have him, sexually and otherwise.

Charles is still slightly hesitant, though, still uncertain– not because he doesn't trust Arthur, but because he probably doesn't trust any man in Arthur's position, and that's not a great thought– it makes Arthur feel protective and angry. "This isn't a problem for you?" Charles asks, a little forcefully, like he doesn't quite want to let himself believe that this isn't the moment where everything shatters around them.

"I've been with men like you." Arthur says bluntly, with a shrug, "It's not a problem for me." Becuase it isn't, not for Arthur– but Arthur also knows how much other men can use it to _create_ problems, how this kind of situation can be extremely dangerous for Charles (how wary and careful Charles must be all the time, if Arthur is only just learning about this now– how serious Charles must've been, when he told Arthur that running on his own had been "Watching out for yourself, never knowing if someone would stab you while you're sleeping, or worse.")

~*~

Not for lack of trying, but they don't actually manage to get much farther than that; they've been gone long enough that Lenny comes out looking for them, and certainly _doesn't_ expect to find them crawling all over each other like rutting dogs. He doesn't react as poorly as one might fear– Arthur's not really worried about the gang's reaction to anyone he might bring into his bed, not in _Dutch's_ gang– but it's a good reminder that they really ought not to be doing this in a Valentine alleyway. Drunken kissing is one thing, but more than that and people might start to take an interest in the character of man who's kissing you back, and that wouldn't be good for either of them. Reluctantly, they follow Lenny inside, amused at how flustered Lenny is, Charles surprisingly willing to tease.

Arthur tries to keep himself under control, but every touch exchanged between the two of them is thrilling, almost more than he can bear. He wants just to rent a room, or cajole Charles back into the alleyway so they can finish what they've started– urges only quelled by the part of him that loves Charles's words as much as the other's actions and body and being: the part of him that wants Charles for more than one night, for a long time.

He wants to remember the first time they actually fuck.

There's a bar fight at some point– probably– but he doesn't actually remember much of it, beyond throwing a couple of punches. It has to be minor, becuase they don't get chased out of the bar, nor does the entire place explode into violence, as is usually the case.

Arthur definitely does remember– kind of wishes he doesn't– searching for Lenny in a sea of people with Lenny's face. It's not upsetting so much for the sheer variations of Lennys incarnate, as for not being able to locate a friend in a sea of strangers who are only apparently familiar, and for that it it is _nightmarish_ – he finally does find the _actual_ Lenny with great fanfare and relief, which his friend is happy and flattered to receive.

The bar fight must've been worse than he remembers– or else they must've gotten into some other kind of trouble, somewhere along the line– either way, the night ends with them narrowly avoiding arrest. They're no longer at the Saloon (he can't remember when they left), but Arthur knows what "There they are" and "Stop right there!" mean in any situation, especially when they're shouted in that universal register reserved only for The Law. Lenny knows _something_ ; he doubles over, giggling, but Arthur announces "You'll never take me alive!" like it's a fucking battlecry and makes a dash for the horses. Charles follows him with a curse (but he's breathlessly laughing and that only eggs Arthur forward), Lenny scrambling to make a quick third.

There is, unfortunately, a sty between them and the horses– Arthur, undeterred, elects to go _through_ , instead of around. He makes it over the first fence, stumbling on the landing, but the second fence proves more of a problem, and he goes down shoulder-first in mud fresh from an earlier rain. That would've been the end of the adventure, were it not for Charles behind him, who vaults the fence with grace that spites the drink and helps Arthur scramble to his feet. Lenny makes it across, too, and somehow the shambolic trio manage to clamber to horseback and scatter away from the exasperated law.

There is no pursuit, justice apparently satisfied by seeing the the backs of them. —

The next memories Arthur has are _painfully_ clear, crisp with all the discomfort of a hangover. His perception of linear time reasserts itself with a vengeance and the reminder that he's _not as young as he once was_ , and he can't do an entire night of wanton drinking anymore. This thought stabs him in the temple even before he opens his eyes, so he decides to keep them closed, to focus on cataloguing the complaints of his chemically abused body.

He's definitely sleeping outside, not in camp. It's way too quiet and peaceful to be camp. The time's midmorning, judging from the the light that pierces his closed lids when he turns his head towards the sky, and the character of gross post-drink sweat that's stuck his clothing to his body. The ground is hard beneath him, uncomfortable– but not as uncomfortable as he expects it to be.

In fact, _he_ is generally less uncomfortable than he expects to be: he's warm, partially covered by a few blankets that smell like horse, and there's an unconscious body nestled against him, radiating heat, an arm and a leg thrown possessively across his chest and thigh.

 _Charles_ , his brain supplies, and for a moment he basks happily in the peace of the moment, before the knowledge that this is only normal in his dreams returns to his freshly sober awareness. Automatically, Arthur jerks to the side, sitting up, eyes snapping open; there's a moment of alarming, awful nausea that has everything to do with hangover, and then it passes and he can visually confirm the situation.

They're laying together under some trees, a few yards away from a cliff edge that Arthur's very glad they managed to avoid in their previous state. The horses are grazing peacefully nearby, untacked but for halters, said tack carefully arranged beside them. There's no campfire, but that's not really surprising.

One of them (probably Charles) had possessed enough wherewithal to attempt the construction of some kind of bedding: they'd been sleeping on Gwlithen's saddle blanket, and beneath Taima's, an additional camp-blanket ostensibly covering them– ostensibly because it's _actually_ only covering Charles, who is also monopolizing most of Taima's blanket. Charles, who doesn't wake completely, despite Arthur's movement– just makes a noise of protest in his sleep, retracting his leg into his blanket cocoon and curling further onto himself, tightening his hold on Arthur's waist.

Arthur huffs a quiet laugh, indulges the thought that he wishes his sketchbook were closer at hand, and otherwise allows himself some time to process this change of situation while the rest of him remembers how to function with a hangover.

There's a lot to process, and Arthur doesn't even bother naming most of the emotions– not beyond the fear, whose shape he examines deliberately. Awake and feeling awful, in the harsh light of morning, he tries to figure out if he regrets this, this disjointed set of interactions he can recall from the previous night– he's spent so long telling himself that he can't have this, that it's a bad idea becuase of how much he always fucks _everything_ up _all the time._ The fear is real, tagged to that last thought– he doesn't want to fuck things up with Charles, not for a second.

But to rescind now would be to fuck things up irreparably anyway, and Arthur _remembers_ what it felt like to have an insistent Charles pressing against his body, to have Charles running broad hands across anything he could reach, like Arthur's much more good-looking than he actually is, like Arthur's some kind of rare treat that Charles has been craving for nearly as long as Arthur's been pining after him. Arthur wants that again, wants it they're both clearer-headed, can't bring himself to regret any of those events– much less their more platonic counterparts, the way Charles had let Arthur pull him into his arms for comfort, let Arthur be that thing that Charles already is for him so frequently.

He's tasted some of that, and he's not willing to let it go (not unless Charles has changed his mind).

Which just leaves the inevitable 'stumbling over the edges of this thing while they both re-navigate sobriety' stage. Arthur can't say he's looking forward to it, but– worth it, probably (he thinks, looking down at Charles's arm around his waist), if it means he gets to wake up like this, with the realization that Charles is a shameless thief of blanket.

Arthur's body doesn't want to cooperate with a slow morning of romantic revelations, however, and he swears to himself (again) that he will never drink that much in his life (as usual) while he gently detangles himself from Charles's (surprisingly resistant, considering how deeply the other man is still sleeping) grip, so that he can flee down to the riverside far below them and make himself feel somewhat human again. Charles cracks an eye and makes a wordless noise of displeasure at him, but closes said eye immediately again and rolls over to compensate for the removal of his human pillow– it is, apparently, too goddamn early to deal with the world. By the time a slightly-less-vile Arthur returns back to their impromptu camp and starts setting up a campfire, Charles has retracted completely, a mass beneath blankets that seems firmly committed to staying unconscious through the worst of the hangover, come hell or high water.

Arthur can't be sure the other's actually _sleeping_ – Charles, for example, reaches out to brush his ankle as he passes by on the way to assemble whatever breakfast can be found in their packs, a disembodied hand roused enough by the smell of coffee to gesture a request. Arthur stops, and Charles uncovers his head just enough to stare blearily up at Arthur. "In my saddle bags. Will you- can you make some tea?" he pulls his hand back and shades his eyes unhappily, "Ginsing, yarrow, willowbark, peppermint, ginger." he rubs the hand down his face and pulls the blanket back over his head, sounding absolutely miserable as he adds "and a lot of Molasses. Please."

This Arthur can handle: splashing around in water, and the quotidian automatism of setting up camp, has carried him into a less-painful stage of his own hangover, so he offers a gentle long "sure" in answer.

It's just short of an hour later when Charles actually emerges from attempted hibernation, dragging the camp blanket with him as he huddles up beside Arthur, at the edge of the fire. He's a mess: long strands of hair have escaped the braid he'd bound them in, tangling wildly around his face from all the burrowing, his eyes narrowed and unclear, scowling as if the world's been designed to spite him personally. Arthur doesn't think he's ever seen Charles drink as much as last night, and he figures this is probably why. Wordlessly, he offers his friend a cigarette and the choice of tin mug with either coffee or hangover cure; Charles takes the tea, but Arthurs not complaining to have more coffee to drink.

They're quiet; no words pass between them, only the noises of crackling fire and sizzling meat and percolating coffee. It's not uncomfortable, though– silence between them rarely is. Charles is losing that edge of post-waking hostility at the world, replacing it instead with a stare of increasing thoughtfulness directed into his tea. Arthur figures that he's _processing_ , just as Arthur'd done earlier that morning, and gives his friend such mental space as is necessary for the task. Arthur focuses most of his attention on his journal instead, angling himself automatically so that Charles can't see whatever he's scribbling (but Charles doesn't try, and Arthur's ridiculously touched by that small gesture of respect).

Arthur attempts words first, but things are too new and uncertain, and it feels superstitiously wrong to commit these events to text so quickly; instead, he pours his hope and uncertainty into sketches, doing a page of their little campsite, of Charles beneath the blankets, of Charles' arms wrapped around his waist– the latter two feel nearly as blasphemous as text would be, but the urge to preserve the memory before it fades is stronger than the superstitious fear.

It's noon and they've eaten by the time Arthur breaks the silence, squinting out into the distance towards New Austin– before too much longer, they're gonna have to get back to doing the work the gang needs from them, going after Sean and Micah and enough money to put food on the table. Charles is looking decidedly less bleary, has undone his braid and is absently combing fingers through his hair (Arthur wants to do that for him; contents himself with drawing it instead, because they've not yet established the boundaries of whatever they're doing).

"Where'd Lenny get to?" Arthur asks, reluctant to disrupt the peace with reminders of their responsibilities. "Did he get picked up by law?" They'll have to go bail the kid out, if so, and Arthur's not looking forward to it or whatever fines the law might levy against them for their own misbehavior.

Charles looks up at him sharply, trying to measure him for some quality that Arthur can't judge from the glance– it's not the reaction Arthur expects, and his stomach drops. "No," Charles replies slowly, giving the unhappy thought he's been nursing some space to bloom, "Lenny got away with us– said he was going back to camp, but you didn't think you could make it that far."

Arthur doesn't remember this at all, but he nods seriously– it sounds right, and he's certainly done himself enough damage over the years to have a strong disinclination towards drunk riding. Nothing seems off about the story, though, so Arthur's at a loss regarding Charles's discomfort, until the other man finishes the thought with a question: "How much of last night do you remember?"

Ah. That makes more sense. "Everything," he says quickly, and then realizes that 'everything' is not a promise he can actually make– not regarding his memory, at least. "Well– most things, probably. A lot." he amends, cursing himself internally for the hole he keeps digging. Arthur looks down at the sketch in his hands, the picture of Charles running hands through long black hair; he absently adds a few lines to finish it, and then closes the journal resolutely, transferring his full attention to his partner, this other man who means so much to him.

This isn't the first time Arthur's been in this situation, but he wants this to be the first time it goes well, and things are not off to the best start.

Charles isn't looking at him, is instead scrutinizing the mostly empty mug of hangover cure like it contains the secrets to whatever uncomfortable questions hang between them. Arthur struggles against himself, without even the excuse of drink to explain his failure at expression– he needs to fix this, but he needs to do it _honestly_ ; he's not a great liar– never has been, for all he was raised by con men– but he's worse at being an _honest man_ , at saying things that make him vulnerable, directly. "I remember what we were on the way to doing, and how much I wanted you." Arthur says, low and serious and desperate and clumsy and earnest and poorly paced, stumbling over pauses in all the wrong places, "As you are."

Charles flinches slightly as he remembers the bluntness of the disclosure, but he also smiles into his mug, a genuine expression despite its fragile edges. "Good," Charles says, tentatively, but he's still maintaining uncomfortable distance, like he's bracing for bad news; Arthur begins to cast around in his head again in panic, trying to find the right combination of words that won't send this thing careening into the campfire before it has a chance to _be_ something. Again, it's Charles' next question that brings him answers– "Do you _still_ want it," delivered with in voice slightly flat with foregone conclusions.

"Yes." Arthur answers immediately, cursing the past tense and banishing all shame at how breathy his voice is– no time for that bullshit, this is more important. Clearly, some of his inner turmoil is manifesting in the tension of his body, and they're close enough that Charles can definitely feel it– Charles is looking at Arthur now, but is inscrutable, deliberately opaque. It doesn't soothe his fear, and in panic, Arthur tends to default to either defensiveness or blunt honestly or both– it's an effort of will to stave off the former. "I just don't want to–" he starts, an inelegant jumble of diction that abortively trails off halfway and ends in a frustrated noise. He runs a tense hand through his own mussed hair, as if he can pull the right words out by the roots. "I tend to fuck this kind of shit up, Charles. I want something serious–" he grates out finally, uncertain where to take that, "But I don't wanna fuck us up."

Arthur's scowling at the fire, so he doesn't see the way Charles softens, abandons the defensive walls he'd started to build around himself– this is _not_ the situation he'd feared it to be. Charles shuts his eyes, takes a deep breath, and then closes the distance between them, slowly and deliberately. They're shoulder to shoulder, just a hair away from touching, Charles still offering Arthur some space if he needs it; he reaches down and picks up Arthur's hand, twining their fingers, drawing the taller man's attention back onto himself.

"So don't." Charles tells him, words unpolished but earnestly delivered, soft and without challenge. At Arthur's look of question, he clarifies, "Fuck us up."

Arthur's face must be a mix of strain and hope and resignation, but he welcomes the contact, wrapping his free arm around the Charles's shoulders and closing that tiny distance between them. Charles leans into him, warm and steady in his arms, a source of stability even while everything else between them is tense and uncertain. "I want it to be that easy." Arthur says into Charles's hair, self-conscious but deliberate.

Charles nods, a small movement mostly for himself, "Let it be." he says, pressing his weight into Arthur's chest in reassurance; he gives his thoughts a moment to arrange themselves before he adds, as deliberate and clumsy and inadequate in his diction as Arthur's been this whole conversation, "I don't think this will." his voice is halting, testing each word for accuracy, "fuck us up, I mean." he clarifies, "Whatever we do will be between both of us. _For_ both of us. It's a partnership. For as long as this is good for you– for _us_ " He rolls his shoulder, half a shrug, as he takes another carefully assessing pause, confirmation that this a promise he's reasonably certain about before he willing to let it loose between them "I don't think you'll fuck us up, Arthur. Not- Not as long as you're willing to work with me, _be_ with me-" And this is the point at which words fail him completely, so he lets them trail away, and replaces them with physical communication instead, bringing their laced fingers up to his lips and kissing Arthur's knuckles.

Arthur barely trusts anything– never really has, never learned that skill, and it's only gotten worse with age– but he _does_ trust Charles, and Charles has earned that trust, time and time again. What Charles is suggesting seems too simple to be possible, and the chance of failure and loss and rejection scares him– that they can click _so well_ and that there's still the very real chance that this will end as badly as any other relationship he's had– but he _wants_ it to be possible, especially now that he's tasted what it can be. He trusts Charles with everything else; he will trust Charles with this too.

And that's apparently what he needs– to trust, to let himself relax into this, to accept what Charles is offering and not jettison everything else in bad memories and fear, and to give everything he's willing in return. That latter, at least, isn't hard for him– the only thing Arthur Morgan knows how to do is _be loyal_ , to give himself _to_ someone else, _for_ someone else. Charles isn't the kind of man who would take such a thing lightly (more to Arthur's surprise, Charles gives of himself right back, and that's novel to Arthur's experience– is probably what has him so off balance.)

Arthur cards his hands gently through Charles's hair, careful and reverent and wanting; Charles lets him, _enjoys_ the touch, returns it with equal affect, becuase they speak more eloquently through gesture than word, and they always have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific warnings and additional information of a spoilery nature:  
> Just to be clear, both Charles and Arthur are extremely drunk throughout this chapter, but they go no further than enthusiastic kissing. Charles discloses that he's trans under these circumstances. 
> 
> There is no sex in this chapter.
> 
> This chapter has a lot of emotional constipation, struggling with language, and generally not being great at the expression of feelings. The awkwardness is mostly linguistic and has to do with the Our Heroes' struggles to communicate effectively, not really with shame or humiliation. 
> 
> Arthur is struggling with some deeply engrained self-worth issues that he doesn't realize he has, and it contributes to the communication trouble. 
> 
> Random BooleanWildcard fic writing trivia:  
> preface- when i'm writing fics, i basically treat each one as a little hermetically sealed self-contained AU, whether or not it's technically an AU. It's weird and non-linear, but basically the important part is that even though all of the Charleses and Arthurs I write are all very much the same Charles and Arthur, they're also independent characters, with some changes based on differences in world and circumstance and experience etc, and with different dynamics in their relationships with each other. All of this sort of happens naturally, I only kinda nudge it where I think it needs to go sometimes, and when things go well, this kind of development has its own momentum.  
> If I were to characterize the relationship between this story's Arthur and Charles in one word, it'd be "delight." It's adorable and kind of overwhelming. More than any other couple I've written, these two really _enjoy_ each other, in a very "I've known you for years and you still manage to surprise me every day and in that I take so much joy; thank you for sharing yourself with me and letting me delight in your experiences and our differences; let's do this for the rest of our lives." kind of way. Especially Arthur to Charles, though I doubt he'd ever be able to express that sentiment out loud.  
> (they haven't yet known each other for years yet, but they will, and when they do they'll still feel that way.)  
> (There is a not insignificant chance that i'll displace this trivia tidbit onto my pillowfort later, becuase public and anxiety and self conscious, but you know, it's here now C: )
> 
> \- 42, booleanWildcard, Asterisk, *, 00101010  
> I am on no socials but for [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/00101010).  
> Thank you for reading

**Author's Note:**

> FINAL NOTES,
> 
> regarding canon-- my usual MO is to write a heavy AU and/or to drop a bunch of things in a blender and see what comes out. Given the constraints of this fic, I am going to be keeping a little closer to canon than is my normal intention, but it is canon divergence and it will likely become quite divergent fairly quickly. I'm also trying to thread a couple of needles here, one of which is keeping the timeline/events different enough for the other RDR2 longish project I'm working on RN, and the other of which is making this somewhat accessible for an audience who hasn't played/watched the game while also not completely rewriting canon in my own words. What this means, basically, is that while some events may track to canon fairly closely, I am still going to vary details and dialogue _at the very least_ , and likely more.
> 
> REGARDING this fic as being part of Banned Together Bingo 2020- you can find that here. Barring any rules changes, I don't necessarily intend to include what squares each chapter is meant to fill on the chapter notes themselves (I have a document where I track that elsewhere), mostly because my emphasis in this project is more the story than the prompts, and I'm worried that to include the names of the prompts would detrimentally alter the reading experience. Some of them will be in the tags. Thankfully, it happens that the prompts that are part of this event are very compatible with this story that I was already planning to tell. C: and some of them will nicely feed some side stories I'm planning too, or inspire new ones. So yay!
> 
> FINAl thing- my relationship to comments is complicated: I have some p serious social anxiety and they tend to inspire a panic reaction in me, so i very rarely reply to them. BUT, i do read them, and i am extremely profoundly grateful to people who respond, even if i'm too much of a trembling chihuahua to muster myself for an answer. I apologize profoundly for this. Please don't feel the obligation to comment unless you want to-- gods knows I know how hard it is-- but if you do legitimately truly _want_ to, then let this lil note operate both as thank you and apologies.
> 
> Credits to a friend of mine for the title.
> 
> \--
> 
> Re socials: I can be found on Pillowfort. Most content is followers only, though there are some public stuff, including how to send me prompts if you feel so inclined.
> 
> Thank you for reading
> 
> \- 42 / BooleanWildcard / * / asterisk / 00101010 


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